When it comes to automating the containerization, configuration and deployment of services the right tools for the job go a long way, which is what Wercker BV’s business is all about. Today the company announced that it has raised $4.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Inkef Capital with participation from existing investor Notion Capital. The company also announced that it will open source its flagship command line interface (CLI) developer tool that facilitates the containerization and deployment of applications and microservices on the desktop.

This investment led by Amsterdam-based Inkef Capital brings the company’s total funding to $7.5 million.

“We’re excited to join the Inkef Capital portfolio and continue to bridge the gap between the innovative communities in Amsterdam and Silicon Valley,” said Micha Hernández van Leuffen, founder and CEO at wercker. “We’re fortunate to have a passionate developer community behind us: a community that will only continue to grow and improve with access to our open sourced CLI technology.”

Wercker uses a Docker-based infrastructure with the intention of increasing developer team velocity by providing easier manipulation of containers with a provided command line interface. CLI is useful for developers because it can be easily embedded in script and batch files (to implement further automation). With this announcement the Wercker CLI is available as an open source project on GitHub and permits developers to spin up and build Dockerized microservices on their local machines. The software runs on both Linux and OSX.

Using Wercker, developers can spin up containers on their local machines in controlled development environments to make debugging easier. By spinning up a container inside of a virtual machine designed to emulate production as close as possible to run tests and watch execution, developers can more easily recreate and identify potential problems.

For more information on the Wercker CLI see the website; developers can also sign up and test out the product on their own machines.

Featured image credit: Photo via Andi Graf.