Earlier this week, Hadoop distributor Hortonworks announced that it raised $50 million from Tenaya Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group and existing backers Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and Yahoo. According to SiliconAngle founding CEO John Furrier, the round is a “big shot of adrenalin” for the Big Data industry.

In Furrier’s view, the capital injection confirms that the Hadoop ecosystem is on the rise. More importantly, it “silences the rumors about Hortonworks being a prime acquisition target by IBM, HP, or Microsoft.” He explains that the financing will enable the startup to grow its footprint in the Hadoop ecosystem without giving up its independence. This is good news for the open-source community for the reasons Hortonworks Rob Bearden listed in an interview on theCube.

“The market reception of our business model and strategy of ensuring 100% open source Apache Hadoop becomes an enterprise viable data platform is resonating strongly with the market,” the executive said. “This includes a rapidly growing number of Hortonworks customers – 100+ and counting – but just as importantly, a broader ecosystem of partners that includes Microsoft, Teradata, Rackspace and many others who have chosen to partner closely with us on this journey to deliver a modern data architecture to our collective customers.”

As Bearden highlighted, Hadoop is supported by a growing number of vendors. This list includes WANdisco, a replication specialist that jumped on the Big Data bandwagon last year.

This morning, the company pulled the curtains back on a new release of its open-source Hadoop distro. The new version features S3 integration, a set of data migration tools, and support for Spark. Spark is an open MapReduce alternative that can process up to 100 times faster than its more established rival.