The cloud is many things, but for the most part, it’s virtual. The cloud thrives on software-defined infrastructure. However, container technology opens new options because they don’t need a virtual environment. So they can run on all sorts of cloud systems.

“With the advent of containers on the scale that we’re seeing them … you now have a sort of portability on the application level that the cloud always promised but didn’t really deliver,” said Aaron Welch (pictured), senior vice president of product at Packet Host Inc.

Welch spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this week’s Open Source Summit in Los Angeles. They discussed containers, cloud services and dealing with legacy applications. (* Disclosure below.)

Designing a cloud for containers

Companies are discovering the value of containers. When it comes to development pipelines, containers are speeding things up quite a bit. This comes from their inherent portability, and also from newer, easy-to-use container platforms that take care of the busywork involved, according to Welch. Thanks to these factors, container-led development can bypass the traditional infrastructure gatekeepers.

Packet was founded to take advantage of containers. Using containers, companies can run their cloud workloads on efficient bare-metal servers. This is a change from typical cloud providers who run virtualized, shared infrastructure. The result is cloud applications that perform better and cost less to run, according to Welch.

Customers, however, don’t only run the latest container technology. Because of this truth, Packet caters to their needs by being agnostic, automating the fundamental infrastructure so companies can stand up their own clouds until containers become more common.

“I definitely feel like in the industry, the excitement and inertia is behind containers,” Welch said.

Regardless of excitement, legacy applications are still an issue. Often, companies can’t upgrade these custom programs. Right now, there’s no one solution to solve the legacy application problem, Welch stated.

“There is no silver bullet, and quite frankly it’s still the Wild West out there. … I think that will eventually happen, but we’re a little bit away from that,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Open Source Summit 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Open Source Summit 2017. Neither The Linux Foundation nor Red Hat Inc. have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE