Surf’s up! Ride the Docker wave

A year ago I hadn’t heard of Docker. Now Docker is everywhere and just about every tech company you’ve ever heard of is partnering with Docker or racing to embrace and incorporate Docker into its platforms and technologies. Docker–and to a larger extent container technologies in general–is revolutionizing development and DevOps and organizations that don’t get on the bandwagon quickly will simply be left behind.

I wrote this post about the tidal wave we call Docker:

Docker is to containers what Kleenex is to facial tissue, Coca Cola is to soda, and QTips is to cotton swabs—the brand is essentially synonymous with its underlying product. The meteoric rise of Docker is still in its early stages and its bringing all container technologies with it along for the ride. A year ago you could have been forgiven for asking “Who’s Docker?” or “What are containers?”, but asking that question now means you’re behind a quickly moving curve and quickly becoming obsolete.

I spoke with TK Keanini, CTO of Lancope, to get his thoughts on the recent DockerCon event and the direction Docker and container technologies are heading. One of the primary messages Keanini took away from DockerCon is that shipping code needs to be a core competency of engineering, which means that deployment pipelines and containers also need to be a core competency of engineering. The days when engineers don’t have any visibility into how their code manifests in production are over.

There were a number of interesting statistics shared at DockerCon. In the last year there has been:

• 183 percent growth in Docker contributors
• 515 percent increase in Github projects with Docker in the name
• 1720 percent increase in job openings listing “Docker”
• 934 percent increase in “Dockerized” applications (150,000 from 14,500)
• Docker at 97 percent for net-usage and purchasing intentions

Microsoft has embraced Docker with open arms over the last year—announcing a variety of initiatives and partnerships to both ensure complete Docker integration into almost everything Microsoft does, and also to ensure Microsoft a seat at the “cool kids” table. Mark Russinovich, CTO of Azure for Microsoft, doesn’t speak to customers without the work “Docker” coming up. At DockerCon Russinovich said, “Anything that is core to the business needs to be modernized to look at new technologies and culture, starting with Docker.”

Even the US government is making a huge push to DevOps—cloud services and containerization being essential elements of that transition. US GSA (General Services Administration)—the agency that oversees federal purchases and acquisitions—is heavily dependent on Docker, distributed services, and open source tools to manage its contractor transaction system. Keanini noted, “This is HUGE! If the US GSA is doing it for such sensitive systems it means the government is not going to push back as much as some have suggested it might.”

You can check out the full post on ContainerJournal: Docker is a tidal wave: Ride it or drown.