Now in the final lap, the Hadoop distribution race is seeing the remaining contenders become increasingly reluctant to stay in their respective lanes and actively seek outside help to differentiate, an opportunity that traditional vendors are exploiting to try and get back on the analytics saddle. The past week saw Dell Inc. become the newest name on the list after it revealed landmark expansion of its relationship with market leader Cloudera Inc., which it has been backing since 2011.

The agreement extends the alliance between the companies beyond hardware to systems integration, a key focus for Dell in its pursuit of higher margins and an equally important aspect of the Hadoop distributor’s plans to drive adoption among traditional enterprises, the main consumers of professional services. Under the newly extended partnership, the server giant will offer organizations assistance in implementing Cloudera’s platform and everything the task entails. That includes setting up the necessary infrastructure and providing integration with legacy data warehousing systems such as Oracle Corp.’s, which so happened to announce a historic update of its own the day after the partnership expansion.

Billionaire founder Larry Ellison, who created the first Oracle database in the 1970s and transformed the project into an industry juggernaut that rules over the enterprise technology landscape to this very day, stepped down as CEO after 35 years at the helm of his company. Ellison is handing over the top title to co-presidents Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, but that is not to say that he’s simply relinquishing control of the company he helped to build. The executive is replacing Jeff Henley as Oracle’s chairman, a central role in which he is expected to continue playing a key part in directing the software giant’s vision as it moves to counter the growing threat of new-generation data management vendors such as Cloudera.

Wolfram Research Inc., another fixture of the analytics world, also entered a new phase in its corporate evolution with the introduction of a cloud-based edition of its technical computing engine. The firm says that Mathematica Online offers a nearly identical experience to the desktop edition, which includes a uniquely broad array of capabilities for tasks ranging from text mining through machine learning to visualizing complex mathematical models. The service builds on that foundation with collaboration capabilities that enable users to share data files with peers and regulate document access, an upgrade that makes it considerably more appealing for the enterprise.

photo credit: add1sun via photopin cc