Container madness is still in full force with more big name vendors like AWS, Google, Red Hat, IBM, Microsoft and VMware jumping on the container bandwagon that Docker got rolling. The madness is also fueled by container technologies driving changes in the conversation around cloud computing.
Docker doesn’t seem to be worried with the growing competition from the big names in tech or the smaller ones like CoreOS’s Rocket. As the de facto leader in the space, Docker is still going strong and recently announced new funding – Docker Raises $95M Series D Round for its Container Platform. They are investing heavily in their go-to-market strategy, as well as the technology stack where they plan to expand the platform’s capabilities with a focus on networking, security, and storage tools around their service. Docker’s VP of Enterprise Marketing, David Messina cited the acquisition of software-defined networking startup SocketPlane as an example of how their focus on moving Docker forward in these areas.
A recent article posted by Network World is posing an interesting question about container technology – will containers kill the virtual machine? This may be a bit of an extreme, but not according to some experts.
There are many Cloud Service Providers that are heavily using container technology due to efficiencies that can be passed on to customers as reduced pricing. Bryan Cantrill, the CTO of Joyent, a container-happy cloud provider, says “There is a structural disruption happening right now. We’re now doing to VMs what VMs did to physical machines.”
According to other industry experts VMS are still a major part of enterprise IT; nothing will be killing them off or replacing them anytime soon. Containers don’t work in every situation. It’s all about determining where and when to use them.
Stay tuned for part trois of our container madness series later this year. Perhaps we will be in the middle of a Battle Royale between containers and VMs, or maybe they will become best buddies and all go out for a cold brew. More to come…
