Talend Raises $40M for Open Source Big Data

Exactly how far Hadoop and NoSQL will penetrate the market remains to be seen. But Talend, which specializes in Big Data integration solutions based on open source software, continues to gain momentum in the channel. It recently announced $40 million in new funding, which it says will drive further open source Big Data innovation.

The funding came primarily from Bpifrance and Iris Capital, with additional investment by Silver Lake Sumeru, Balderton Capital and Idinvest Partners, which have supported Talend previously. In a statement, Talend said it "will use the investment to accelerate innovation, augment its portfolio and support its go-to-market efforts in the Big Data space and other leading edge domains for enterprise IT."

In particular, that means integrating key open source Big Data platforms, including Hadoop and NoSQL, with value-added tools to simplify deployment, the companys said. In the words of Mike Tuchen, Talend CEO:

Talend is in a unique position to serve the fast growing big data market. Our customers are often confronted with the limits of legacy integration platforms that are unable to deal with new challenges created by the explosion of data, the ubiquity of hybrid cloud architectures and the ever growing expectations from the business. Talend's agile and open model puts us in a unique position to quickly deliver innovative and powerful solutions to address these needs.

The investment in Talend reflects, broadly, the growth of the Big Data market in general, which will expand by 30 percent in 2014 and surpass $14 billion, according to research from IDC. But it's also a result of the strong demand in the channel for integrated platforms that make it easy for enterprises to install and maintain technologies including Hadoop and NoSQL, which are not always exceedingly user-friendly in their raw forms.

And the announcement is also another sign of the central importance of open source within the Big Data space. Thierry Sommelet, a representative of Bpifrance, commented of Talend that "the quality of their solutions, coupled to an enterprise open source model," provides a solid basis for continued growth.