Apache Hadoop start-up Cloudera, which just signed an alliance with NetApp like rival MapR's got with storage big shot EMC, turned up Tuesday at Hadoop World in New York with $40 million stuffed in its pockets.

The D round led by Ignition Partners ups its total funding to a serious $76 million. Existing investors Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and In-Q-Tel also kicked in.

Accel means to make a habit of Big Data investments, believing Big Data "will drive the next-generation of multibillion-dollar software companies."

It just launched a $100 million Big Data Fund and is looking for "category-defining companies at every layer of the Big Data stack." It ticked off storage, data management platforms, applications and services, including data analytics, vertical applications and mobile.

The fund is described as being "aligned" with Cloudera, which will be brought in for advice on developing applications on the Apache Hadoop platform. Accel is already invested in Couchbase and its NoSQL database technology.

Cloudera has earmarked its new money for expanding sales and marketing and supporting "key strategic initiatives." Cloudera was the first company to make Hadoop an enterprise-ready solution, and has collected a reported hundred customers including eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Its Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH), which is pure open source Apache Hadoop bundled with other Apache projects in the Hadoop stack, is recognized as the most widely deployed Hadoop distribution in both commercial and non-commercial environments. The Big Data outfit also sells Cloudera Enterprise, subscription-based software that includes its Management Suite for operating Hadoop clusters at scale in demanding production deployments.