The Momentum Index published its latest report, ranking  96 open-source startups. Out of its rankings, Momentum sees three emerging trends:

• The freemium pricing models work. Startups that use the model see early proof of traction.
• Talend could be an IPO candidate.
• Kaltura is one to watch. Its open source offering in the online video space should be watched by Brightcove.

The Top 10

Talend: We met these guys at Hadoop World. I’ve known about them for a while. Their speciality: a data connector platform. They recently added a Hadoop connector.
Kaltura: It seems like these guys have been around for a while. I saw them first when working on the Drupal platform a few years ago.
Pentaho: Another company with a Hadoop angle – Pentaho is focusing on the business intelligence space. Momentum says Pentaho revenues grew 120% and added 400 customers in 2010.
JasperSoft: Another business intelligence provider that claims 12 million product downloads and 13,000 customers.
Astaro: The company bundles open-source security products into appliances.
Black Duck Software:The company helps other companies adopt open-source software. Momentum says the company is profitable and has more than 800 customers with 36% annual compound growth over the last three years.
Alfresco: One of my favorites in the open-source community and well-respected for its enterprise content management technology.
Engine Yard: One of the oldest and most respected platform as a service providers. Early on, the company established a reputation for its excellent Ruby-on-Rails support.
SugarCRM:Led by CEO Larry Augustine, Sugar CRM has been on a tear. Earlier this year it became an IBM strategic partner. SugarCRM reports its has had a 56% increase in total billings and 600 new customers.  Biggest competitor? Salesforce.com.
Eucalyptus Systems: The open-source infrastructure provider builds private cloud environments for enterprise customers. Momentum says one in five Fortune 1000 customers have deployed a private cloud on their platform.

This is a good list. Momentum looked at 200 companies for the report. The report is well-organized well in an easy-to-read format. Overall, it’s worth the free email subscription. Great value.

My takeaway: Look at the startups here and they all have deep ties to emerging trends – in particular big data. Talend, for instance, helps integrate data. That’s a critical need in today’s big data world. Alfresco helps companies manage the vast amount of documents that an enterprise produces.  JasperSoft focuses on the need for companies to derive intelligence through data analytics.

Our bet is this trend will only intensify and yield an ever growing startup community in the years ahead.