7 Major Vendor Announcements That Stood Out At DockerCon 2017

The Container Revolution Is Here

DockerCon, the Docker container industry conference, is a good indicator of just how popular containers have become in the enterprise and for partners helping companies deploy new applications and make their older applications run more efficiently.

This year, DockerCon had over 5,500 attendees. The first DockerCon, in 2014, had around 500.

The companies contributing meaningful developer announcements, integrations and tools have changed, too. The startups are still here, but so are IBM, Oracle, CA Technologies, Dell EMC and other major companies that are using container tech to make enterprise computing more efficient. Docker itself had three big announcements at the show – two new open source projects and a fast-track program for getting legacy enterprise applications running in containers.

As DockerCon wraps up today in Austin, Texas, here are seven (non-Docker) announcements that caught our eye during the show.

CA Technologies Shows Off Two Startups

CA Technologies featured two of its startups – Qubeship.io and Yipee.io – at DockerCon this week as examples of incubator projects working to make container tech easier for developers to deploy. Yipee.io provides a visual tool that aides in the creation and orchestration of microservices applications. Qubeship.io is another developer tool aimed at simplifying Docker deployments. "If you have a complex application or series of applications, making multiple containers communicate well together with security, scalability, and reliability, Docker deployment and orchestration can be a nightmare," according to Qubeship.io's blog.

Rancher Labs Partners With Docker

Rancher Labs and Docker have partnered to integrate Docker Enterprise Edition into its Rancher container management platform. Rancher users can now access all the security and portability benefits of Docker EE through that integration. The arrangement also allows users to buy support for both Docker Enterprise Edition and the Rancher container management platform directly from Rancher Labs.

Oracle To Release Products Into Docker Store Marketplace

Oracle announced this week that it's working with Docker to release its databases, middleware and developer tools into the Docker Store marketplace via the Docker Certification Program. Developers can now pull images of Oracle products in Docker as enterprise-ready containers. The Oracle products offered as containerized applications include Oracle Database, Oracle MySQL, Oracle Java 8 SE Runtime Environment, Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Coherence and Oracle Instant Clien t.

IBM To Make Docker EE Available For Linux

IBM said it plans to make Docker Enterprise Edition (EE) available for Linux on its z Systems mainframes, LinuxONE enterprise servers and Power Systems. The Docker container management platform helps IBM mainframe and server users streamline their development chores as they look to run applications at scale across hybrid cloud infrastructures that combine public and private cloud resources.

Dell EMC Provides Open Source Updates

Dell EMC provided the latest updates of open source contributions from {code}, Dell EMC's open source community. Those updates include trust and security enhancements to REX-Ray, an open source, storage management solution designed to support container runtimes such as Docker and Mesos. The Dell EMC team said REX-Ray plugins for a variety of cloud and storage platforms are now Docker-certified and available in the Docker Store.

StorageOS

London-based StorageOS used DockerCon to introduce the public beta release of its software solution that provides persistent storage for containers. StorageOS is a software-based, policy-driven, distributed storage platform that provides storage for any container with any orchestration on any infrastructure, the company said. After beta testing, the software is slated to be released free to developers on the Docker Store, letting them run stateful containerized apps with high performance, highly available persistent storage. The software is deployed as a Docker Certified 40 MB plugin or container on 64-bit Linux.

Nimble Storage

Nimble Storage, which earlier this year was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, demonstrated Nimble Multicloud Flash Fabric for Docker Containers, an offering for cloud-ready MSPs and system integrators who deliver enterprise solutions and services around DevOps and other modern applications. The offering lets IT personnel build, ship, and run with production data anywhere to manage data easily from the Docker command line, APIs or standard tools. The company claims the Multicloud Flash Fabric provides an enterprise-grade persistent storage solution for Docker Containers with no storage expertise required.

CRN Senior Editor Joseph F. Kovar contributed to this report.