The analytics space has come a long way since SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE first went on air in 2010. Whereas four years ago CIOs were just beginning to grasp the potential of Big Data, enterprises today are adopting Hadoop at an organizational level to make information a bigger part of their decision-making processes.

Data holds immense value for businesses with the means to unlock it, but finding the right tool for the job is easier said than done. A recent Wikibon study discovered that a significant percentage of enterprises are struggling to achieve expected returns on their Big Data investments, an alarming situation that Cloudera is seeking to amend by putting the power of “advanced analytics” at the hands of everyday business users.

TheCUBE hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante sat down with Jeff Kelly, the author of the report, to discuss the company’s bold ambitions and its role in the ecosystem.

The way Vellante sees it, Cloudera is one company that’s moving past the race to zero in the Hadoop distribution space to pursue higher-margin opportunities in adjacent markets. This transition pits the firm against EMC and VMware spinoff Pivotal while leaving Hortonworks as the dominant player in the open source Big Data community.

Expanding on this point, Kelly highlights that “Hortonworks, as they say in their slogan, they’re all about Hadoop and that’s all they’re interested in doing. When you talk to Cloudera they’re clearly trying to move much higher up the stack. “

“If they want to compete with an IBM around Big Data and analytics, you’re gonna have to start getting the applications, analytic environments for data scientists, those kinds of things. It’s a longer term play, and it will be interesting to see if they can pull it off,” he continues.

Watch the video below for more insight into the state of the market and the trends that are shaping Big Data and the future of business.