Wercker Workflows Promises More Docker Container Automation via Pipelines

Wercker has debuted a new container automation platform, Wercker Workflows, which the company says will simplify the process of building and deploying Docker containers to platforms like AWS and CoreOS.

Essentially, Wercker aims to add a new level of automation to the container ecosystem by tying together the task-specific automation tools that already exist. Orchestration solutions like Kubernetes make it easy to manage containers, registries like Quay help to keep track of container images and source code repositories provide a hub for storing code. But these platforms do not directly integrate with one another.

Wercker says it addresses that gap by allowing DevOps teams to configure pipelines. Users can configure pipelines to build and deploy containers automatically through the various automation tools that comprise the container ecosystem. Wercker Workflows also integrates with cloud deployment platforms, such as AWS and CoreOS.

The company hopes to appeal to DevOps teams that want to simplify the process of creating and deploying containers, and make it more continuous — which is a key proposition, since a large part of the value of using containers in the first place derives from their ability to remove pauses from the app development and deployment process.

“We know developers need to break out of the two-step paradigm to go beyond build and deploys, and we’re excited to partner with companies and open source projects like CoreOS, Deis, Kubernetes and Mesosphere to make it happen,” Micha Hernándezvan Leuffen, founder and CEO at Wercker, said. “Wercker Workflows provides our users with the powerful tools needed to develop for the modern cloud, which increasingly involves pushing containers to registries and notifying schedulers.”

Wercker Workflows has the endorsement of a number of key partners in the container ecosystem. “We’re excited to see how Wercker can supercharge development with automation pipelines to build containers and release to Kubernetes,” David Aronchick, Kubernetes senior product manager, said.

Jake Moshenko, product manager at CoreOS, said, “Using Wercker Workflows to push to the Quay container registry creates a powerful combination to automate the development of distributed applications.” He added that the solution also makes it easy to build container security scanning into the automated build and deployment process through CoreOS’s Clair security tool.

Wercker is certainly not as big a name in the container world as players like Kubernetes and CoreOS, and Wercker Workflows is not the first solution of its kind. But the company is gaining momentum. It has received more than $7.5M in venture funding so far, and appears to be faring well in efforts to build partner relationships.

Christopher Tozzi

Christopher Tozzi has covered technology and business news for nearly a decade, specializing in open source, containers, big data, networking and security. He is currently Senior Editor and DevOps Analyst with Fixate.io and Sweetcode.io.

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