Hadoop could be one of the biggest IT markets in recent history, as MapR announced on Monday that first quarter bookings for MapR Hadoop have tripled since last year, and that one of its customers has generated more than $1 billion of revenue by using it.

Chief Executive John Schroeder cited risk and fraud analysis or trade analytics as examples of high-value uses for MapR, which approaches Hadoop by adding enough capabilities that it can license MapR like a conventional proprietary software product; 90% of its sales comes from software licenses, going ahead of consulting services that help customers figure out how to use Hadoop.

Intel has already invested $740 million in Cloudera, and $100 million in Hortonworks, leaving no doubt about the importance of the market for Hadoop. Hadoop implementations from Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR, International Business Machines Corp. and Pivotal are all present in the market, according to Pepperdata Inc. CEO Sean Suchter. He said others are catching up with Cloudera’s lead.

Schroeder pointed out MapR’s raising of $64 million from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, New Enterprise Associates and Redpoint Ventures, and it’s discussing a mezzanine round with late stage and strategic investors. The company also stated that at least one MapR customer in the following industries — in financial services, networking and computers, software, online and Web, ad media, telecom and market research — had spent more than $1 million with MapR.