Cloudera Nets Another Massive Funding Round

As the buzz winds up for the Hadoop World conference, many have been expecting major announcements from the one company that has sent the big elephant for big data soaring.

Just moments ago Cloudera announced it has landed another round of funding, this time led by Ignition Partners, for a cool $40 million. The company claims it will use the additional funds to bolster its ability to keep expanding through new sales and marketing programs.

The company is riding high on the Apache Hadoop wave in terms of its own distribution, but also due to its ever-growing demand for training, certification and support. For instance, just last week the company announced Cloudera University, which is set to churn out an anticipated bumper crop of data scientists and Hadoop pros over the coming year.

Cloudera has been powered by some rather notable press in recent years, including the announcements that a number of big name companies are making use of its Hadoop distribution. The company counts almost all of the major social networking giants among its ranks, including Facebook Twitter and LinkedIn and also is used to power mega-retail websites like eBay.

According to Cloudera CEO, Mike Olson, the new round of investment speaks volumes about the rate of growth the company is experiencing and the gilded path many are expecting them to walk in coming months. He says that with the new funding in place he is confident that his company will “continue to accelerate Cloudera’s leadership in the space and deliver game-changing technology.” He points to the team of investors behind the company as being software platform experts and says that this experienced team of investors makes them not only funding partners but “trusted advisors.”

This announcement will fire up the existing fervor that surrounds the company at Hadoop World, which is set to take place November 8-9 in New York City. Doug Cutting, lead architect at Cloudera and Mike Olson are both expected to give keynote talks at the event which is now completely sold out. Conference organizers say they will not accept any further registrations and that walk-ins will be turned away.

More information about the investment round is available and for those who want to “window shop” here are more details about Hadoop World, which kicks off tomorrow.