SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--dotCloud, Inc., the commercial entity behind the Docker project, today announced it will change its name to Docker, Inc., effective immediately. dotCloud, Inc. introduced Docker in March 2013, and the open source project--which packs, ships, and runs any application as a lightweight container--has quickly grown in popularity among developers, sys admins, and enterprises of all sizes. The project has also spawned a rapidly growing ecosystem of partners, Dockerized applications, and Docker-based businesses. While the company will continue to offer the dotCloud PaaS service, Docker, Inc.’s primary focus will be supporting the rapidly growing Docker ecosystem, and establishing Docker as a new standard for containerization, an alternative approach to virtualization which is rapidly gaining adoption. The company’s plans to launch Docker-related commercial offerings early next year are discussed in more depth on the new website, www.docker.com.
“Docker is an interesting open source project that is riding multiple industry trends,” said Al Hilwa, program director, application development software at IDC. “These trends, such as interest in agile and productive deployment, cloud architectures, the DevOps movement, and big data, are driving the need for a lightweight and standardized way to virtualize workloads. Docker is offering such technology for Linux environments and is quickly building an ecosystem around it.”
Enabling Applications to be Built and Deployed as Lightweight Containers
Docker is an open source engine that enables any application and its dependencies to be encapsulated as a lightweight container. Once that container is created (either iteratively or automatically from source), the container will run consistently, without delay or overhead, in almost any Linux environment: bare metal, virtualized, public cloud, or private cloud. Developers can finally build once and run anywhere. And, since all containers can be manipulated using the same basic commands, they lend themselves to automation, allowing operators to configure once and run anything.
Momentum around the Ecosystem
Seven months after launching, the Docker project is experiencing increased traction throughout both the developer and DevOps communities, and is part of a rapidly growing ecosystem.
Highlights include:
- Over 140,000 container downloads
- Over 6,700 GitHub stars and over 800 forks
- Over 600 GitHub Dockerfiles created in three months
- Thousands of containerized applications on the Docker public registry
- Over 150 projects built on top of the open source engine
- Over 50 Meetups in 30 cities around the world
- Almost 200 contributors, 92 percent of whom don’t work for Docker, Inc.
- Over 13,000 developers who have successfully completed online Docker training
- Companies like Yandex, Rackspace, eBay, and CloudFlare talking and blogging publically about their use of Docker
- Integrations created with some of the most important enterprise projects, including Chef, Puppet, Travis, and Jenkins
- A growing list of companies launching purpose-built business on top of Docker, including CoreOS, Deis, Flynn, Orchard, and more
Most recently, the company announced its collaboration with Red Hat to provide OpenShift developers simpler, more secure, lightweight, and portable environments for applications. The company also announced that it has been formally accepted into the Havana release of OpenStack.
“We have been amazed and humbled by the enthusiastic reception we have received from developers, sys admins, companies, and partners. Given this momentum, we have transitioned our focus to building the Docker ecosystem,” said Ben Golub, chief executive officer at Docker, Inc. “Ultimately, we think that containerization can be one of the most significant enablers of the next generation of computing, and are excited to see Docker emerging as a container standard.”
Business Model
While the company will continue to offer PaaS services under the dotCloud brand name, Docker, Inc.’s primary focus will be enhancing the Docker project and building the platforms (Docker registry, educational materials, meetups, partnerships, developer community, and integrations) to support the Docker ecosystem.
In early 2014, Docker, Inc. will launch a set of Docker-related commercial offerings, which include managed services for developers (Docker as a Service) and enterprises (including private registries, orchestration, and monitoring). The company also announced plans to build a partner network of service providers, backed by Level III support from Docker, Inc.
“Despite our plans to build a commercial business around Docker, we remain committed to being truly open source,” said Solomon Hykes, founder and CTO at Docker, Inc. “We will stay fully open under the Apache License, we will not pursue an open core model, and will continue to follow the open design pattern, with broad based contributions and maintainers from outside the company. In addition, we are committed to creating a level playing field, with clear and fair rules for all companies who want to launch commercial offerings on top of Docker.”
Supporting Resources
- Docker, Inc. Commercial Site
- Docker project
- Follow Docker on Twitter
- Take the Docker interactive tutorial
- Join Docker on IRC
- Join Docker on Google
- Go to the Docker repository on GitHub
About Docker, Inc.
Docker, Inc. is the commercial entity behind the open source Docker project, and is the chief sponsor of the Docker ecosystem. Docker is an open source engine for deploying any application as a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere. By delivering on the twin promises “Build Once…Run Anywhere” and “Configure Once…Run Anything,” Docker has seen explosive growth, and its impact is being seen across devops, PaaS and hybrid cloud environments. Seven months after launching, the Docker community is expanding rapidly: Docker containers have been downloaded over 140,000 times, the project has received over 6,700 Github stars, and is receiving contributions from almost 200 community developers. Thousands of “Dockerized” applications are now available at the Docker public index. Docker, Inc. offers both commercial Docker services and PaaS offerings at the docker.com website.
Docker, Inc. is venture backed by Benchmark (Peter Fenton), Trinity Ventures (Dan Scholnick), AME Cloud Ventures (Yahoo! Founder Jerry Yang), Y Combinator, and SV Angel (Ron Conway).
