Docker Inc. today introduced a new cloud service, Docker Build Cloud, that promises to speed up the development of containerized applications.

The offering will complement the other tools that the company offers to streamline such software projects. One product, Docker Engine, eases the task of packaging an application’s code files and related components into a container. The company also provides a service called Scout that can scan a containerized workload’s open-source libraries for known vulnerabilities. 

The task of turning raw code files into a functioning application is known as the build process. Docker Build Cloud, the new service that Docker debuted today, promises to speed up this process by a factor of up to 39. The company says that one early adopter, an unnamed enterprise software provider, reduced the average duration of its builds from between 15 and 20 minutes to less than two.

Many competing tools are designed to run on developers’ local machines. Docker Build Cloud speeds up builds by offloading the necessary computations from the developer’s machine to the cloud, where more infrastructure resources are available. According to the company, an added benefit of this approach is that it leaves the computing capacity of the local desktop available for other programming tasks. 

Depending on which product tier a customer purchases, Docker Build Cloud uses instances with eight or 16 vCPUs. A vCPU usually corresponds to a single thread on a physical central processing core. Each instance is also equipped with 16 to 32 gigabytes of storage. 

According to Docker, another contributor to Docker Build Cloud’s speed is a feature called shared cache. The feature can save the files that are created through a software team’s builds and reuse them the next time they’re needed by an application. This removes the need to recreate the files in question from scratch, which saves time.

Companies sometimes require the ability to run an application on infrastructure powered by both Intel Corp. and Arm-based processors. In such situations, developers must create a separate build workflow for each chip architecture. Docker Build Cloud promises to avoid that requirement and thereby save additional manual work for software teams.

“Docker Build Cloud effectively tackles the challenge faced by engineering teams who lose valuable time waiting for builds to complete, enabling them to remain focused on innovation,” said Docker Chief Product Officer Giri Sreenivas. “As teams expand, this solution scales with each engineer, leading to significant increases in productivity.”

The service is rolling out a few months after the introduction of Docker AI, another new addition to the company’s product portfolio. The latter tool can generate code suggestions for developers building containerized applications. It promises to speed up tasks such as testing new applications’ reliability prior to their release.

Image: Docker