One of today’s most disruptive information technology trends is software containers, a technology that’s poised to transform the enterprise IT landscape by revolutionizing the way software is built and run.

But just how and when containers go mainstream remains a matter of pitched debate. Containers bundle an entire runtime environment – including an application and all of the software needed to run it – in a single package that works on any operating system. They’re similar to virtual machines, but the most important difference is that virtual machines include operating systems and containers don’t. Because containers are thus small and quick to deploy, they’re starting to catch on for high-volume computing loads and rapid application development.

Market watchers think the ultimate success of containers is only a matter of time, but they point to a host of technology and organizational challenges that are holding back widespread adoption. The continuing debate about how to address those challenges will take center stage this week at the KubeCon 2016 conference that opens in Seattle Tuesday, bringing together some of the world’s top container visionaries and advocates. (* Disclosure below.)

Developer favorite

Developers have long been the driving force behind software containers, but recent evidence suggests that the technology’s popularity in areas such as DevOps agile development isn’t yet translating into broader enterprise adoption. For example, 451 Research Inc. reported last year that 22 percent of enterprises were using containers, with another 10 percent conducting trial projects. Months later, a Cloud Foundry Foundation survey of IT pros at firms with 100 or more employees reported exactly the same adoption rate of 22 percent. A more recent survey by BitRock Inc.’s Bitnami cloud hosting service, which quizzed 1,300 IT pros at companies with 50 or more employees, revealed that just 24 percent have adopted containers.

While those numbers may depict a stagnating market, other studies make contrasting claims. ClusterHQ Inc., for example, found that container usage for production workloads jumped 96 percent in the past year and that latent demand is strong. Accurate figures are difficult to pinpoint, in part, because vendor surveys may ask questions that bias the results. The reality is probably in the middle.

“Container adoption is accelerating for certain use cases, such as in connected devices, Internet of Things and bespoke applications,” Ralph Loura, chief technology officer of cosmetics maker Rodan & Fields LLC, said in an interview. Loura was an early user of  containers in his previous role as chief information officer of the enterprise group at the former Hewlett-Packard Co. and now uses them at his current company. But he added that container adoption for traditional workloads is still in its early stages, since many commercial off-the-shelf vendors still don’t offer much support, or are only beginning to introduce it.

Analysts interviewed by SiliconANGLE mostly said containers are following the normal growth curve of any disruptive new technology. They noted that Hadoop was developed more than a decade ago, but has gone mainstream only in the last couple of years.

Large enterprises are slow to adopt new things because they demand robust technology and support, said Al Hilwa, program director for software development research at International Data Corp. “The adoption of technology often proceeds in fits and starts,” he said. “Containers have become very popular for developer workflows and in the digital transformation mode of IT in some places, where developers have taken to them for testing and workloads.”

Enterprise conundrum

Enterprises are approaching containers cautiously for a lot of other reasons too. The lack of robust storage tools is one. Container management is another well-known issue, and a third is lack of talent, according to a recent survey from continuous app delivery firm Shippable Inc. The same study also pointed to the technology’s overall immaturity, concerns over security and a lack of clear return on investment as other gating factors.

If history is any lesson, many of these concerns will fade away as they’re addressed by the wider community of container vendors. The issue of container management, in particular, is being tackled head-on by legions of developers from some of the biggest technology companies. For example, Rodan & Fields uses Apcera Inc.’s container management platform to secure, deploy and manage containers using a policy- and rules-based approach, Loura said. Kubernetes, which is the focus of this week’s KubeCon, has spawned a large community of developers around its “orchestration” platform for managing multiple containers.

“We are seeing tremendous activity in the broad ecosystem of containers,” said Stu Miniman, senior analyst at Wikibon, owned by the same company as SiliconANGLE. “Kubernetes is a great example of this activity – an open source project with significant contribution by Google, Red Hat and many more – that automates deployment, scaling and management of applications that are built using containers.”

Security is another important issue. While Gartner Inc. has said that container-based apps are actually “more secure” than their standard counterparts, containers themselves “are not inherently secure,” Loura said. But he expects security to improve in the same that way Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Server evolved to support enterprise-grade security over time.

For now, enterprises will tend to err on the side of caution when new technologies are involved. “In this age of the rise of hacking, IT is hyper-suspicious of any new technology,” said IDC’s Hilwa. “Containers have well-understood drawbacks in workload isolation, and that will be the subject of much innovation over the next few years.”

The virtualization question

Architectural comparison of containers (right) and virtual machines. Image by Docker Inc. via Wikibon.

There are also practical reasons why companies shy away from containers: In many cases, they simply don’t know where to begin or what to use them for, said Miniman. “[Sometimes] it’s a lack of understanding or the lack of a clear use case that fits what they need,” he said.

When Docker Inc. first made containers trendy about three years ago, many people saw them as a kind of lightweight alternative to virtual machines. But these days many adopters use the two technologies in tandem, deploying containers atop VMs for better isolation from other containers running on the same server. That creates some confusion over where and how containers should be deployed.

“It’s a nuanced issue,” Miniman said. “Containers sit above the operating system, so the decision of infrastructure underneath is related – but not determined – by the containers. Yes, containers and hypervisors can go together, but there are also environments where either no hypervisor [software that manages virtual machine], or a new type of hypervisor will be used.”

Some experts consider the whole debate to be overblown. Rodan & Fields’ Loura, for example, said there are clear scenarios in which IT organizations should opt for one or the other. “If you want to run multiple copies of a single workload or app, then use a container,” he said. “But if you want to run multiple applications or workloads, then use a VM. They don’t ‘compete.’ They are good for different things.”

The future is ‘cloud-native’

Although enterprises are moving slowly, cloud computing giants such as Google Inc., Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft have used containers for years. Google announced more than two years ago that its entire service “everything” runs in containers. That’s hardly surprising for a company that spins up around two billion of them a week. Speed is one of the key requirements of public cloud users.

In time, enterprises will probably want to take advantage of these capabilities too, but they also know that containers aren’t a replacement for virtual machines. The most likely scenario experts foresee is that containers and VMs will coexist, with the implementation of each based upon the specific organizational requirements of the application. For example, VMware Inc., which some people originally thought would be imperiled by containers, has been quick to embrace them.

The most likely sweet spot for containers will be as building blocks in the hybrid and multi-cloud world, said Miniman. Because containers are flexible enough to live in both public and private clouds, they eliminate infrastructure concerns from application design. As a result, containers are looking like the “atomic building blocks” for cloud-native applications.

Furthermore, many of those cloud-native applications will incorporate up-and-coming technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, smart bots and voice interfaces, Loura noted. He expects that these technologies will serve as the launchpad for widespread container adoption in the enterprise.

“Once they’re used here, containers will become commonplace and comfortable, and thus expand to other areas,” he said.

* Disclosure: SiliconANGLE Media’s video unit theCUBE is a paid media partner at KubeCon. Neither conference organizers nor sponsors have editorial influence over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Creative Commons photo via Pixabay