Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2016. Read them in this 8th Annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by David Messina, vice president of marketing, Docker
The Rise of Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) and the Defining Role of Applications in 2016
Moving
forward into 2016 we believe we will see solidification of a number of changes
building on momentum gained among developer and ops communities over the past
two years and creating more agile, flexible, and productive enterprise IT
environment.
Perhaps most
importantly, we believe that the rise of Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS) will
facilitate Ops-originated application delivery. Deployment and use of
containers in production will be greatly eased by Ops-led
Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) architectures focused on enabling IT's ability to
deconstruct monolithic application architectures in favor of microservices.
CaaS will succeed without requiring organizational changes as seen with with
the rise of DevOps, eliminating the need to retool and re-skill by refocusing
on what Ops can do for Dev through integration of core and container
technologies, thereby creating a more circular pattern of collaboration.
Second, we
believe that Container use will continue its rapid rise. With downloads
of Docker images having risen from 67 million in December 2014 to 1.2 billion
just a year later, that containers will become the prevalent mechanism for
application development and deployment is clear. Advancements in 2015 regarding
container security, manageability, storage, networking and other barriers to production
deployment are driving rapid growth. Recent research shows that 40 percent
of organizations using Docker have it in production currently, and those
numbers are expected to rise sharply in the coming year.
We also see an
increasing trend toward applications, rather than infrastructure, defining
everything. The ability to develop apps that can be deployed anywhere
using containerization lessens the demands, and therefore the focus, on the
data center and software-defined-data center (SDDC) architectures. Dev, Ops and
IT as a whole will be allowed to think more in terms of what benefits end users
most, unconstrained by the costly and time-consuming infrastructure management
, expansion and enablement technologies that have confined them to date.
Due to these
developments, the balance between Dev and Ops, agility and control, will be
improved. Container-based services will evolve to be Ops-led instead of
a Dev-only model. Dev and Ops will share the development lifecycle, with Ops
setting up development environments in which everything, from security to
management, is baked into the platform.
Finally, as a
result of the shifts we have outlined above, containers will move beyond Dev
and Test to become a production mainstay. Integration of enabling
technologies from the broad container ecosystem, in addition to accelerated
innovation from de-facto container leaders, will move container deployments
into the mainstream.
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About the
Author
As
the SVP of Marketing, David is responsible for orchestrating all marketing and
communications activities for the Docker community and the enterprise market
segment. In his role, David is focused on building awareness, communicating
Docker's value and driving customer demand. Prior to Docker, David was SVP of
Marketing and Product Management at Xangati where he was responsible for
directing the roadmap and market direction for Xangati's product suite in addition
to forging strategic partnerships with industry leaders. Prior to Xangati,
David held product marketing and marketing communications executive positions
for CoSine Communications and Bay Networks (acquired by Nortel Networks).
