The Big Data space saw a lot of activity this past week. Hortonworks nabbed $50 million
from investors, Datameer unveiled software that can churn out insights faster than any data scientist, and Splunk introduced a tool that ingests information on the fly. Pentaho also grabbed a few headlines after it introduced a vendor-agnostic platform that lets users manage multiple data stores from a single pane of glass.

On Thursday, Hadoop distributor Hortonworks closed a $50 million funding round led by Tenaya Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group. Existing backers Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and Yahoo contributed too. The Big Data startup said that it will use the capital to grow its global presence and accelerate product development.

Datameer followed up the news from Hortonworks by introducing the third release of its flagship Hadoop platform. The solution includes Smart Analytics, a set of four machine learning functions that sort data, track user behavior, connect the dots between different metrics and predict conversion rates. This toolset is designed for business users who don’t possess the skills necessary to complete these tasks manually.

On the same day Datameer announced the newest version of its platform, Splunk unveiled a Hadoop tool called “Hunk.” The solution lets users manipulate Hadoop using Splunk’s relatively simple querying language, and eliminates the need to curate data
before analyzing it. This functionality is complemented by a highly visualized interface that makes it easier for data scientists to communicate their findings to decision makers.

Lastly, Pentaho introduced an ‘adaptive Big Data layer’ that serves as a centralized management hub for a wide range of Big Data solutions. The platform supports distributions from Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR and Intel, as well as two popular NoSQL databases.