Microsoft, along with rivals including Google and Amazon, have come together for the Open Container Project, which is a non-profit organization related to the Linux, the biggest competitor for Microsoft Windows, says a report from Business Insider. However, Microsoft will now contribute to work to invent a new software container technology that will break old standards and set a new ones.
Docker’s technology simple, but effective
Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, believes the development “of the Open Container Project is one of the most important industry technology moves this decade.”
Microsoft coming on board was the most surprising announcement of this week’s biggest Docker event. Docker, who invented the market for containers, acquired a $95 million funding recently giving it a valuation of over $1 billion, says the report.
Container technology, similar to Docker’s, allows a developer to design their software so it is can be used everywhere. Such a functionality is vital, especially as web applications get bigger.
Such a functionality allow developers to write an application on their laptop, and send it to their team for testing purpose on their local servers, and then run the application on a big public cloud servers from tech giant like Amazon, Google or Microsoft Azure without any changes to its code.
The technology is expected to be simple and powerful, so developers need not to worry about configuring their code, instead they can focus on writing good software.
Why Microsoft and other tech firms joined Docker
Apart from Microsoft, other members of the project include HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, VMware, Goldman Sachs and several others.
Docker CEO Ben Golub describes the company’s containers as the “de facto standard,” adding that their technology powers over five million containers across all the major operating systems and cloud platforms. So this could be one of the reasons why Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM and others were so quick to support Docker containers
Core OS, a Google’s backed start-up, was once Docker’s biggest boosters. However, it parted ways after it disapproved a Docker’s project, especially in security terms. Thereafter, Core OS formed an alternative to Docker called “appc.” This created the appearance that vendors have to choose between the two. The issue became so serious that Google had to specifically clarify that it plans to support all major container formats.
