Riak is an emerging big data technology that’s picking up momentum. The NoSQL database was listed on Jaspesoft’s big data connector infographic as one of the smaller offerings accounting for 26 percent of connector downloads in 2011- the section that hasn’t been gobbled up by the top three solutions just yet.  That leaves plenty of room for innovation.

Riak is offered by a company called Basho Technologies, which just landed a big contract with Bump. The latter is the developer of the 7^th most downloaded iPhone app by the same name, which enables users to share things such as pics and calendar info by bumping their devices together. This translates into a lot of data that the company has to handle, and it chose Riak for the task.

Bump has a user base of 80 million people, which share at least two million photos – among other things – every day. In total, the new NoSQL deployment powered by Basho currently stores roughly 600-800 million structured data objects.

“Bump is the 7th most downloaded app for the iPhone, meaning massive user adoption and data needs – exactly the type of situation where Riak thrives. We’re thrilled to play a key role in helping Bump take advantage of the opportunity their success provides,” said Donald J. Rippert, president and CEO, Basho Technologies. “As Bump gains thousands of new users each day, Riak is seamlessly scaling in the background to give every Bump user the same thrill of rapidly sharing content between family and friends.”

The big data ecosystem is seeing a lot of growth lately. The expanding pool of offerings provides one indicator of that, and Cloudera recently offered another. The Hadoop distributor revealed two certification programs for admins and developers yesterday, extending its existing education courses to further raise awareness for big data solutions, and empower data scientists with the tools  for big data’s future.