Microsoft Brings Docker Datacentre To Azure Marketplace

Microsoft has reiterated its support for container technology by injecting Docker Datacenter into Microsoft Azure, making the container deployment suite available on the Azure marketplace.

“As you’ve seen over the past couple years, at Microsoft we’ve been rapidly releasing container innovation to the Windows and Linux ecosystems – partnering with industry leaders like Docker and Mesosphere to deliver container solutions that help companies build and deploy applications at cloud speed and scale, whatever their choice of platform or tools,” said Microsoft CTO Mark Russinovich.

Russinovich appeared at Docker’s annual DockerCon conference this week in Seattle to throw support at the technology, after Docker announced public betas of Docker for Mac and Windows, and private betas of Docker for Azure and Amazon Web Services.

“Docker Datacenter is now available in the Azure Marketplace, bringing container management and deployment services to enterprises with a production-ready platform supported by Docker and hosted locally behind the firewall,” said Russinovich.

As Docker’s Trisha McCanna explained, Docker Datacentre is a ‘Container as a Service’ platform built for application development with simplified management that is most importantly agile for business customers.

“With our new cloud templates pre-built for Docker Datacenter, developers and IT operations can frictionlessly move dockerised applications to an Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Azure environment without any code changes. Now businesses can quickly realize greater efficiency of computing and operations resources and Docker supported container management and orchestration in just a few steps,” she said.

As businesses increasingly look towards container adoption, Microsoft doesn’t want to be left behind, and is making sure Azure is ready for developers who want to use Docker. According to Microsoft, Azure positions the company in a position where its hybrid cloud capabilities can help container enthusiasts, built on top of a commitment to open source technology.

Docker Store

With ‘Dockerised’ apps growing 3,000 percent in two years, container creator Docker has also launched its own Docker app store into private beta.

Announced at this year’s DockerCon, the Docker Store will act much like other app stores, and provide users a marketplace for validated and trusted Docker software.

The marketplace will host a range of free, open source and commercial software, and gives a much needed route for the enterprise to use compliant, commercially supported software from publishers.

Announcing the Docker Store, Docker’s Krish Garimella said: “The use and creation of dockerised content has grown exponentially in the last couple of years. This demand on content and the expanded use of Docker within the enterprise naturally led to the need for more content, entitlement, visibility into security profiles and compliance.”

The store comes with a search feature, and all the software is built on Docker images. Contributors to the store already include companies such as Citrix, CA Technologies, HPE, and Cloudera.

“We have a great set of enterprise software vendors who are participating in the initial beta launch of the Store,” said Docker.

With the number of containerised apps growing to 460,000, according to Docker, the store comes at a time when mainstream interest of container technology is gathering pace.

Users can sign up for the Docker Store beta program here, and the company is adding people to the beta in batches.

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