Docker, the organization behind the open platform for distributed applications, today announced Docker Datacenter (DDC), an integrated, end-to-end platform for agile application development and management at any scale. Comprised of Docker Universal Control Plane (generally available today), Docker Trusted Registry and embedded support for Docker Engine, Docker Datacenter addresses the requirements for organizations that want to manage the application lifecycle of Dockerized applications from development through production.

Enterprises are using Docker Datacenter to deploy an on-premises Containers-as-a Service (CaaS) solution. CaaS is an IT-managed and secured application environment where developers can, in a self-service manner, build and deploy applications. Some of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, like ADP, have bought and deployed Docker Datacenter to deliver a CaaS solution that provides agility for development teams, control for operations teams and portability of applications across any infrastructure, from on-premises datacenters to public clouds, across a vast array of network and storage providers.

“As part of our initiative to modernize our business-critical applications to microservices, ADP has been investigating solutions that would enable our developers to leverage a central library of IT-vetted and secured core services that they could rapidly iterate on,” said Keith Fulton, Chief Technology Officer at ADP. “Docker’s CaaS approach will enable us to drive transformation across the entire application lifecycle from development to operations. A key feature for us is the end-to-end integration with Docker Content Trust to centrally administer and control our images so that only signed and validated content can be used or deployed into a production environment. With Docker, we will be able to ensure application portability, whether it is between dev and ops or between the datacenter and the cloud.”

From Fortune 500 to SMB: Agility, Portability and Control

In an era where enterprises are putting more workloads into the public cloud than on-premises, the requirement for balancing agility, portability and control is greater than ever. This is why Fortune 500 companies from the pharmaceutical, financial services, healthcare and insurance industries have purchased Docker Datacenter for all their applications -- legacy monoliths and microservices -- while enabling secure content controls and role-based access that leverages the tools already used for security compliance and IT governance.

Similarly, smaller to mid-sized organizations are using Docker Datacenter to move to a more modern application infrastructure. Healthdirect Australia provides health services by contracting with service providers, managing ongoing operations and implementing governance structures so that their health services are provided safely and efficiently. The company already is running many of its Dockerized applications in production and is in the process of shipping all its applications in Dockerized containers.

"Docker Datacenter provides us with a solid foundation for our container environment, enabling our team to spend more time developing and shipping the applications that bring our customers value,” said Scott Coulton, DevOps Solutions Architect for Healthdirect Australia. “Docker Datacenter also abstracts the operations tasks away from the dev team with great features like one-click upgrades. As all devops teams know, less time on operations means more spent on development, giving you greater agility in bringing your applications to market.”

Other organizations, such as SA Home Loans, a mortgage finance company headquartered in South Africa with over 200,000 clients, selected Docker Datacenter after seeing first-hand the enterprise-class networking and security capabilities in addition to the ease-of-use when managing containers using Docker Swarm.

“At SA Home Loans, we use Docker Datacenter to host a microservice architecture that supports our primary business applications,” said Mark Dand, Systems Engineer at SA Home Loans. “By moving to the Docker platform, we have decreased our time to production significantly and have empowered our developers to use the languages and frameworks with which they are most comfortable. “Through our use of Docker Trusted Registry, a component of Docker Datacenter, we are able to host our in-house images, providing a central location for our developers to get the images they need quickly, consistently and securely as it becomes an integral part in our automated build process.”

“Docker Datacenter leverages our years of innovation in the Docker open source projects and ecosystem, and the feedback and experience of early adopters running Docker in production,” said Solomon Hykes, Founder and CTO of Docker. “Through Docker Datacenter, we ship an integrated, commercially-supported production environment for container workloads, bringing developers the agility they’ve come to expect from Docker-based applications, with a Docker-native application lifecycle where what they build is what runs in production. This provides IT Pros with the level of control and security they need to manage an enterprise-class Container-as-a-Service platform, portable across any infrastructure, both on premises and in the cloud.”

Availability and Support From Open Source

Docker Datacenter is an integrated suite of commercial software (Universal Control Plane and Trusted Registry) and embedded open source Docker projects (Engine, Swarm, Content Trust, Networking). The integrations among them are tested and validated configurations with enterprise-class support. This guarantees the interoperability and full support of the Docker API across the stack for a seamless transition in taking applications in development to production. Official commercial support from Docker provides enterprises with direct access to Docker support and engineering to ensure their Docker application environments operate as designed in their IT infrastructures.