Docker Debuts Its First Commercial Product, Partners With IBM

Docker - an open source engine that helps automate the deployment of any application as self-sufficient container - has launched Docker Hub Enterprise (DHE). The company also announced a partnership that will bring IBM's SoftLayer servers support. 

The new offering - Docker Hub Enterprise - is aimed at security-conscious businesses that are uncomfortable trusting an outside service to store their application containers. 

Docker has been the rage among hip startups and has already been embraced by likes of Amazon and Microsoft. 

The software announced during its DockerCon EU conference would allow enterprise customers to easily share, maintain and collaborate on Docker containers behind their own firewalls.

According to the company, DHE has been refreshed with tools to enable the rapid installation and GUI configurations of its images. The future iterations will be expanded to include more DevOps-oriented features. 

"Our vision for DHE is that it will evolve from the place to share and collaborate on distributed applications to a strategic control point for both developers and sysadmins to manage all aspects of the application development lifecycle - from build through production - on any infrastructure they choose," Docker CEO Ben Golub said in a blog post announcing the new offering.

According to reports, IBM will be the first company to sign on to sell Docker-based solutions including DHE. AWS and Microsoft will be offering prebuilt DHE images that would allow customers to quickly get the application up and running in their suitable environment. 

"IBM Containers service running Docker containers on SoftLayer's bare metal servers provides improved performance over traditional approaches," said Angel Diaz, IBM's vice president of Open Technology and Cloud Performance Solutions. 

"[This] strategic partnership between IBM and Docker is the first of its kind to provide enterprises with integrated tools and services they need to automate application deployment across the public cloud and on-premise cloud centers."