Software container company Evolute Inc. is the latest in a long line of startups aiming to tackle the challenge of migrating legacy applications to more modern information technology infrastructure.

The company is launching a new software platform today that it said can quickly and reliably migrate software applications across computing environments up to 10 times faster and at a fraction of the cost of current virtualization technologies.

Evolute said businesses are increasingly looking to move their software apps to container environments to take advantage of their benefits, which include being able to develop applications just once and run them on any infrastructure platform. Containers also use less resources, are easier and cheaper to run, and contribute to a faster development cycle.

In contrast, virtualization is more costly and time-intensive and limits the portability of applications across various clouds and other IT environments. However, there are problems with containers that still need to be addressed, the company said. These include a lack of “intercontainer networking,” which makes it tricky to share application resources and communicate across containers. Other problems include security issues, unreliable availability at scale and limited storage flexibility.

These are all problems that Evolute wants to address with its new product. The company’s biggest claim is it reckons it can reduce the time it takes to migrate legacy apps to software containers from around 12 to 18 months to as little as just three minutes, while also cutting costs related to hardware and software by up to 60 percent. The platform also introduces greater scalability thanks to the native and flexible storage access it provides for each application.

“Evolute analyzes any software application, separating the operating system from code libraries to determine the most unique pieces of code,” Evolute founder and Chief Executive Kristopher Francisco said in an interview. “With awareness of the network down to binary and data storage constructs, we allow software to move and run natively in a container environment. Our latest release focuses on runtime uniqueness and operational agility, reducing software to the size needed to be effective in a container environment.”

Evolute also reckons it can improve the security of containerized apps as it protects the network by authenticating each interaction they make with other apps and data sources.

The company, a graduate of the Alchemist Accelerator program, is also being backed by Chevron Technology Ventures LLC through its Catalyst Program, which is focused on early-stage companies working on technologies that can directly benefit the oil and gas industry. This fits neatly with its goal of focusing on Fortune 500 companies involved in the energy industry, Francisco said.

“We’re targeting these industries first because they have capabilities that can be vastly improved by the shift to a services-based architecture across their environment,” he added. “With Chevron, we enable success for their edge and focus on their central teams. We’re able to provide software and services not traditionally served by regions the public cloud can reach.”

Image: Evolute