Hadoop is getting hotter, and that can only be good news for Cloudera Inc. as it looks to cash in on one of enterprise software’s biggest trends.

Rival companies like Hortonworks Inc. and IBM might have thrown a spanner in the works when they established the ever-so-slightly controversial Open Data Platform, but Cloudera is still in a very healthy financial state, according to new coverage from research firm Manhattan Venture Partners.

The outlook comes after Cloudera itself reported revenues north of $100 million for 2014, but being a private company we can only take their word for it, as there’s no way to actually verify that figure.

Manhattan’s making a good ‘guestimate’ of the company’s true financial, however, and it’s posted an extremely positive outlook for Cloudera, saying the vendor pulled in an estimated $107 million in revenue last year. And even better news lies ahead, with Manhattan expecting Cloudera to bring in $199 million in revenues by the end of this year, up 86 percent on the year before, and a whopping $329 million in 2016.

As a result, the analysts say Cloudera as a whole could be worth close to $5 billion. Although they weren’t able to put an exact figure on the company, “Cloudera should be valued on the high end of its valuation range of $2.8 billion to $4.7 billion,” the analysts said.

That estimate falls in line with Intel Corp’s earlier $4 billion valuation of Cloudera, a number it came up with shortly before it pumped some $900 million into the company. The high end of Manhattan’s valuation takes into account Cloudera’s further growth since that time.

The only problem for Cloudera is that being a multi-billion dollar company doesn’t necessarily mean being a profitable one. Manhattan’s analysts said Cloudera won’t be profitable for at least three more years.

“At the current run rate, we expect operating profit in 2018 at the earliest,” the analysts told VentureBeat.

Of course that won’t really surprise anyone. Hadoop might well be one of the hottest enterprise technologies around, but it also happens to be open-source, meaning that vendors have to monetize by selling support or for-fee add-ons, as Cloudera does. Which means it’s still very difficult to make money. Just ask Hortonworks, which reported a net loss of $90 million last February in its first earnings call after going public.

As for Cloudera, the firm was rumored to be looking to go public sometime this year, but Cloudera officials have since denied they have any plans to launch an IPO in the foreseeable future.

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