Containers are growing in popularity all the time, but for companies that use them it’s still a significant challenge to hire workers capable of managing them.

Those revelations come from continuous app delivery firm Shippable Inc., which released its findings from a new survey of 300 software developers in order to gauge the latest trends and challenges around containers. The survey shows that more than a third of developers have utilized container solutions to accelerate app release cycles, but many more struggle to find people with the skills needed to properly utilize the technology.

A lack of suitably skilled employees was also cited as the main reason why many companies still don’t use containers, the study found. Other smaller factors in the way of container adoption include the technology’s immaturity, concerns over security, and a lack of ROI.

“Our research and personal experience shows that companies can experience exponential gains in software development productivity through the use of container technology and related tools,” said Avi Cavale, CEO at Shippable, in a statement. “That said, there are still hurdles to overcome. Companies can help themselves by training internal software teams and partnering with vendors and service providers that have worked with container technology extensively.”

The study also found that most container users do so in tandem with the largest cloud providers. Some 54 percent of respondents said they use Google’s Container Registry service, while 45 percent use Amazon Web Services’ EC2 Container Registry. As to which kinds of cloud developers prefer, the survey shows an almost even split between public cloud infrastructure (31 percent of respondents) and private cloud (30 percent).

Other notable findings from the study include:

• 52 percent of developers run their containerized applications on Google Compute Engine
• 58 percent of developers use GitHub with containers

Despite the significant skills gap regarding containers, Shippable says there’s hope this problem will soon be alleviated. The study shows that 89 percent of respondents were either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to increase their container usage in the next year. Shippable says that channel partners can help reduce the skills gap by offering more training opportunities for container solutions. Alternatively, companies can look to specialist container companies like Docker Inc. in order to increase awareness about the potential of container technologies.

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