Network Evolution Key to Driving Cloud Expansion
Now that Docker containers have emerged as an industry initiative, the company that created Docker has decided that competing directly against vendors that deploy Docker containers may not be the smartest use of its limited resources.
Docker today announced that it has sold the dotCloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering to cloudControl, a cloud service provider in Europe looking to extend its reach into the U.S. market.
Via this acquisition, cloudControl CEO Philipp Strube says in addition to gaining Docker container expertise, cloudControl has gained about 500 new customers. About half those customers will now be located in the U.S, says Strube.
Cloud services provided by cloudControl make use of the application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Heroku, a unit of Salesforce.com. That means that any application that supports those APIs can now run on the cloud platforms provided by cloudControl.
With containers on Linux systems emerging as an alternative to virtual machines, Strube says cloudControl sees a need to support both technologies for different types of application use cases.
It’s still unclear what impact Docker containers will ultimately have on enterprise applications. But as an emerging technology, the one place that most IT organizations are going to be most comfortable gaining hands-on experience with Docker containers is likely to be in the cloud.
