Roughly six weeks after Docker’s announcement of the Docker Hub Enterprise (DHE), Cloud Computing Today spoke to Docker CEO Ben Golub about Docker’s progress in 2014 as well as the future of distributed applications and containers more generally. Golub cited the landmark release of Docker 1.0 in June, the first DockerCon in history and “exponential growth” amongst financial services such as ING and Goldman Sachs as key achievements in 2014. Speaking of the future of distributed applications, Golub noted the increased agility enabled by Docker containers as exemplified by ING’s ability to implement hundreds of changes to an application per day in contrast to the previous state of affairs wherein code changes were released every several months. Golub also remarked on the way in which Docker has now become the “de facto standard” for creating distributed applications in collaboration with over 20,000 APIs and an increasingly vibrant “ecosystem of users contributors and partners.”
Cloud Computing Today: What were some landmarks and key achievements for Docker over the past year?
Ben Golub (CEO, Docker): 2014 was a tremendous year for the Docker project and the outstanding ecosystem of users contributors and partners that comprise the community. The biggest landmark of the year was the release of Docker 1.0 in June at the first ever DockerCon. That production-ready release signaled to developers everywhere that Docker could be depended upon for strategic development workflows. Docker Hub was also released at that time as well which was a critical component in showcasing Docker as an open platform for distributed applications.
Since 1.0, there has been exponential growth in usage in the enterprise with large financial services companies like ING and Goldman Sachs publicly referencing their successes with Docker. That customer traction has led to an incredible burst of strategic partnership announcements during the back half of the year including VMware, Microsoft, Google, AWS and IBM to name a few.
Cloud Computing Today: How do you foresee the future of distributed applications? What is driving their proliferation in the industry?
Ben Golub (CEO, Docker): We expect to see a new generation of Docker-based distributed applications go mainstream in 2015, as enterprises are recognizing the many benefits associated with these agile applications. Distributed applications are 100% portable, are composed of discrete interoperable services, have a dynamic lifestyle and are backed by an incredible ecosystem of technology partners .These capabilities are very attractive to today’s businesses which need to deliver differentiated offerings to maintain a competitive edge. For example, ING’s use of Docker enables the bank to make application innovations over 300 times a day, where in the past they were able to make a single change every nine months.
Cloud Computing Today: How do you envision the future of container technologies more generally in 2015?
Ben Golub (CEO, Docker): Docker container technology has become the de facto standard for creating a composable set of services for building distributed applications. Through support of open APIs, there is now a flourishing ecosystem of 20,000 tools to support Docker and over 70,000 Dockerized applications. This critical mass is helping to foster an evolution of how container technologies are being leveraged. That evolution as we showcased at DockerCon EU in December is to multi-container multi-host distributed applications.
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