Container Interoperability : Do Standards Really Matter ?
David Linthicum
“ We didn ’ t standardize our tech , just a very narrow piece where it made sense .”
After Docker founder and CEO Solomon Hykes made the statement above , the community of IT professionals who currently use containers may have experienced a growing sense of unease .
Given Hykes ’ sentiment , one might wonder , if you leverage current container standards , what will become of those standards going forward ? Will they be proprietary to one vendor or provider ? How much interoperability is possible ? And how much of the standards will the community control ?
At issue is the poor track record of many standards . While some , such as the standards surrounding Linux , have worked somewhat well , hundreds of others have fallen onto the standards trash pile , having either been absorbed into a proprietary technology or disappeared altogether .
That said , the container pitch is all about standards , including the rise of the core de-facto standard : Docker . While it seems as though Docker is committed to at least some support for standards , it is , at the end of the day , a business . As such , its management will operate in its own self-interest , and you should expect nothing less . And that is not always a bad thing .
So what does all this mean for standards and how you choose what technologies to use ?
Where the Container Competition Stands
While the Docker name has become synonymous with containers , it is not the only container game in town . Other vendors , such as CoreOS , Google , Microsoft and Amazon , all view containers as a huge business opportunity as well . All are working in the Linux Foundation coalition , including Apcera , Cisco , EMC , Fujitsu Limited , Goldman Sachs , HP , Huawei , IBM , Intel , Joyent , Mesosphere ,
10 | THE DOPPLER | WINTER 2017