News

Open Source Integration Platform Adds Hybrid Cloud Support

• By John K. Waters
• June 13, 2011

Commercial open-source middleware maker Talend has taken its recently announced Unified Integration Platform into the cloud. The aptly named Talend Cloud is an extension of that development, deployment and monitoring environment for data management and application integration, but tuned for hybrid IT environments.

"It's pretty clear that 'the cloud' has moved beyond the hype phase, and we see lots of people using cloud-based implementations, but they're not going whole-hog into the cloud just yet," said Pat Walsh, VP of marketing in Talend's Application Integration Division. "They'll still have their data residing on premise with some of their applications in the cloud. They'll have a private cloud and a public cloud. The result is this hybrid environment that the IT organization needs to manage. Talend Cloud is particularly designed for use in these environments."

Unveiled in May, the Unified Integration Platform is a leading example of middleware that addresses the converging data and application integration markets. As the company explains it, the Talend product is designed to "free data management processes that are traditionally bound to specific applications by abstracting them as standards-based services that can be reused by other applications." The idea is to make it easier to synchronize data among operational apps and across enterprise boundaries.

A key component of the Unified Integration Platform is the company's open source enterprise service bus, Talend ESB. Talend has been on something of a mission to "democratize the integration market" by making the ESB more affordable. 

"What we mean by democratization," Walsh told ADTmag in an earlier interview, "is not only the attractive economics that open source products provide to our customers, but it's also about accessibility to users. Oftentimes these types of products can be complex and difficult to use, and we -- along with the open source community -- are making them easier to use."

This new cloud-based version of the integration platform supports deployment of all Talend's solutions and technologies within the Unified Integration Platform, Walsh explained, including data integration, data quality, master data management and enterprise service bus. All components can be installed transparently in the cloud, on-premise, or in hybrid mode, he added.

Talend Cloud can be deployed on such cloud platforms as Amazon EC2, Cloud.com and Eucalyptus. And it comes with new connectors that offer native connectivity to a range of SaaS apps, including: Salesforce.com, NetSuite, SugarCRM, BIRT OnDemand, Marketo, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Database.com, Hadoop, Google Applications, Google Analytics and Twitter.

Walsh said new connectors continue to be added on a regular basis, by both the open source community that supports Talend and the company's own R&D organization.

The Talend Cloud is available now. More information is available on the company's Web site.