What better way for Docker Inc. to make its enterprise ambitions known than by bringing customers Visa Inc. and MetLife Inc. on stage at DockerCon in Austin, Texas, according to Stephen Foskett (pictured), organizer in chief of Tech Field Day, days held throughout the year that bring together information technology product vendors and independent thought leaders.

“Docker is not only ready to be in the enterprise and not only has the tools to be in the enterprise, but is already there with some major customers,” Foskett said.

Containers, a virtualization method for deploying and running software apps, are exploding in the enterprise, a win Docker hopes to expand on with Docker Enterprise Edition, which provides an integrated, tested and certified platform for apps running on enterprise Linux or Windows operating systems and cloud providers.

The company is also spreading out in other, more surprising, ways, Foskett told Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during the DockerCon event.

For one thing, Docker has long included a special storage layer for containers, something that puzzled Foskett at first. “Here’s a company that knows nothing about storage or networking building a storage and networking system. You know, what’s wrong with these people?” were his initial thoughts, he said.

However, his view has grown more nuanced. Docker’s recent work building a network for its container-management system Swarm is encouraging, Fosskett said.

Docker, don’t quit your day job

“Docker invested pretty heavily in creating a — I don’t want to say a real enterprise networking layer — but a better networking layer for Swarm,” he said. “And I think that may be a road sign of what they may do for storage as well.”

This may not be enterprise grade, but it could at least be scalable and distributed storage for Swarm customers, he added.

In the short term, most enterprises using Docker containers will opt for storage plugins from companies like Nimble or NetApp Inc. or container storage arrays from StorageOS Ltd. and others, Foskett predicted.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of DockerCon US 2017 Austin.

Photo: SiliconANGLE