UPDATED 08:34 EDT / MARCH 05 2015

Docker CEO Ben Golub In theCUBE NEWS

Docker’s latest acquisition aimed at enabling software-defined networking for containers

Docker CEO Ben Golub In theCUBEDocker Inc. has acquired yet another member of its burgeoning technology ecosystem, a networking specialist called SocketPlane Inc., in a bid to make large container clusters easier to operate. The deal is the third in as many quarters aimed at increasing the appeal of the lightweight virtualization model to enterprises.

The startup has previously bought a four-man team operating under the name Koality that created a continuous integration framework for quickly rolling out changes to cloud services using containers. Shortly before that, Docker picked up an even smaller outfit from the U.K. to help simplify the orchestration of complex distributed applications spread out over multiple instances.

The startup’s latest acquisition continues CEO Ben Golub’s efforts to shift its focus beyond merely helping developers write and roll out code faster to providing the programmatic scaffolding needed to execute that business logic at scale. The deal buys Docker a software-defined networking technology that integrates its namesake container management platform with Open vSwitch.

OVS packet management stack serves as the default networking component in the Xen hypervisor powering the world’s largest public clouds and supports a wide range of other back-end technologies, most notably OpenStack. But Docker is less interested in SocketPlane’s software, which hasn’t had much time to mature in just a few months, than it is in the team.

The six industry veterans who make up the outfit have accumulated many years of experience working at major vendors such as switching kingpin Cisco Systems Inc. and Red Hat Inc., one of the container movement’s biggest backers. Absorbing that talent provides Docker with the means to pursue its strategic networking ambitions.

The startup is not looking to compete with the likes of Cisco. Rather, it hopes to unify the different network management options out there under a common set of interfaces for the Docker community to work with. Delivering on that goal could provide a major boost for enterprise adoption of containers.

For starters, sparing developers the hassle of becoming familiar with the different networking technologies in their organizations’ increasingly heterogeneous infrastructure would significantly lower the learning curve and thus foster the creation of more applications. Even more importantly, those applications could thereby run on a shared foundation transcending any individual management paradigms.

Such standardization could avoid the need to rewrite containerized workloads when moving among environments with different networking stacks. Since simplified migration is one of the main advantages that Docker offers over the conventional virtualization platforms dominating the enterprise today, delivering the common interfaces is a top strategic priority.

The likely next step for the startup is extending that interoperability to the storage side, which may very well involve additional acquisitions. But for the time being, Docker should have its hands full onboarding the SocketPlane team and working out integrations with networking partners.


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