DockerCon17 Debrief – A View From The Pod

by Tim Hohman | Friday, Apr 21, 2017 | Docker

DockerCon 2017 Debrief

Docker held its fourth annual DockerCon event this week in Austin, TX. This year the announced attendance was 5,500 people, a very large increase from last year. More attendees, more exhibitors, more sponsors, more parties — there is no question the container market is rapidly expanding.

DockerCon was a wonderful opportunity to learn from all the incredibly smart people in this community through many mediums: the keynote speeches, use case presentations, hallway conversations, exhibit booths, and late night debates at the after hour socials. For those who were unable to attend, here are my key takeaways from the week:

1. Production Use Of Docker Is Skyrocketing

The proof points?

• Docker said so. All chuckling aside, the conference was packed full of large enterprises discussing their use of Docker in production. VISA, Northern Trust, ADP, Anthem, AT&T, and MetLife were just a few of the big names mentioned on the big stage.
• My discussions at the “Pod”. Boxboat jointly manned the CoScale Pod to pitch and demo our partners’ robust container monitoring solution. We asked each attendee “Are you running containers in production”? The response spread was Yes (30%), No but Very Soon (3 months) (30%) and No but within a year (~40%). I think 2017 will represent the year container adoption crosses the chasm to the “Early Majority” phase.

Docker is no longer a tool solely for use by developers to do their job faster. It's now proven as a solution to help infrastructure and operations teams speed deployments and reduce costs.

2. Docker Inc. Is Making The Right Moves In Terms Of Openness And Innovation

• The Moby Project (allowing modular container based systems using Docker and third party components)
• Announcements from Oracle and IBM (zLinux support)
• Microsoft (run Docker containers on either Windows or Linux in a Hyper-V)

Docker, Inc. is making the right decisions to ensure the Docker engine is the right choice for enterprises interested in choice and flexibility – choice in your development toolkits, enterprise software options (Oracle, and more to come), your orchestration options (Docker EE, Kubernetes), infrastructure (Linux, Windows), or Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP).

3. Austin Is An Incredible City

Good weather + great live music + tasty food trucks + fun bars/restaurants + easy transportation & airport = Awesome