Dockercon 2017: Docker Sharpens Enterprise Focus
For much of the existence of Docker, the primary focus of Docker Inc. has been on developing new applications. At the Dockercon 2017 conference this week, Docker Inc. made it clear it’s now turning its attention to existing legacy applications.
Docker announced the Modernize Traditional Applications (MTA) Program in partnership with Avanade, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft, through which IT organizations can access professional services expertise that enables them to move an existing application on to Docker Enterprise Edition.
In many cases, the goal will be to move those applications into a public cloud. But many organizations will also benefit from being able to invoke those applications via a standard Docker application programming interface (API). In time, organizations will then begin to decompose those enterprise applications into smaller sets of microservices that are more consumable by other applications, says Docker CEO Ben Golub.
Docker’s enterprise ambitions also received a boost this week at Dockercon from Oracle and IBM. Oracle announced that its software will now be available via the Docker Store. Siddhartha Agarwal, vice president of product management and strategy for Oracle, says that’s significant because instances of an Oracle database running on Docker now will be fully supported by Oracle.
That announcement comes on the heels of Oracle’s acquisition this week of Wercker, a managed continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) platform that is delivered as a service. Agarwal says Oracle is unique because it provides customers with the option of running containers on-premises or in platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments, or bring their container-as-a-service (CaaS) environment and host it on Oracle’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environment.
IBM, meanwhile, announced at Dockercon that Docker is now available on both Power Series servers and IBM mainframes. On the one hand, that capability makes those platforms more relevant to cloud-native application developers. On the other hand, it becomes a lot easier to move applications off those platforms.
Docker is also getting a boost in the enterprise from CA Technologies, which at Dockercon announced has started to incubate projects based on Docker. Qubeship.io, which provides CI/CD workflows is now an open-source project. At the same time, CA Technologies is also providing early access to Yipee.io, a modeling tool that can be used by teams of developers to create microservices applications.
Elsewhere at Dockercon, Dell Technologies announced it has updated its storage orchestration engine. In addition, the company said it is working on a storage interface standard in collaboration with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
Finally, Redis Labs announced it is now previewing Redis Enterprise Pack Docker image. Developers now can use local development environments to build and test applications with Redis Enterprise Pack, including the ability to run Redis Enterprise Flash technology on a laptop PC.
Obviously, it’s still early days when it comes to deploying containers in a production environment in the enterprise. But it’s also clear that a significant amount of momentum is building around containers in the enterprise regardless of how ready many of those IT organizations are to manage them.
