Episode 11: Hickory Dickory Docker

Docker went from being a small startup to an enterprise company that changed the way people think about their infrastructure to now, where its relevance is somewhat minimal. The conversation is no longer around the container level. Docker has become commonplace.

Today, we’re talking to Jérôme Petazzoni, formerly of Docker. While he was with the company for about 8 years, Docker definitely experienced a roller coaster ride.  

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Amount of work conducted on the enterprise vs. community editions
• Docker was so widely adopted because its core technology was open source
• Challenge is to build a viable business and revenue model for the long run
• Similarities between Docker and Red Hat open source platforms
• Docker went from six people working in a garage to having a few hundred employees and $1.3 billion valuation
• Changes happened, but they were gradual; the changes were necessary to be a profitable and sustainable company
• Contingent of internal and external people believed that Docker was the answer for whatever problem surfaced; Docker would save you, but not always
• Balancing Act: Pushing forward with a correct message and regulating enthusiasm
• Networking and Docker for dummies; confusion and problems of things not working as expected have been resolved
• Things will continue to shift; Kubernetes and the orchestration battle
• What was unthinkable, could happen by companies pushing the envelope and making progress
• Will who you have as your Cloud provider stop mattering? It depends.
• All major Cloud providers plan to offer managed Kubernetes services and what Jérôme thinks of them
• Jérôme’s opinion on whether Kubernetes will follow this same path as Docker
• What does the road ahead look like for infrastructure automation? There is potential and lots of best practices in Cloud environments.

Links:

• Jérôme Petazzoni on Twitter
• https://jpetazzo.github.io/
• Docker Crunch Base
• Digital Ocean
• Red Hat
• Corey's Heresy in the church of docker talk
• Kubernetes
• ZooKeeper
• Azure