Much Ado About Containers

There has been a lot of sudden interest in containers, focused in tech publications fervently discussing “Docker vs virtualization”, or around the Red Hat Summit, blogs and so on.  In my opinion, they are leaving out two words, "Cloud Foundry".  Through the buzzword bingo, it would appear that the Redhat/OpenShift camp, a Cloud Foundry competitor, is aligning with Docker.  To contrast, Cloud Foundry has used Warden for the "container" form factor for building and linking cloud applications.  Since being put into the community's hands, versus VMware or Pivotal's, it's possible that Docker will even become a choice here as well (Decker).  Ultimately, customers’ options haven't really changed even though many articles portray that a turning point is imminent.  Customers will be able to utilize the virtual form factor that fits their business needs, and dare I say fits their business culture?  

This could be on a VMware SDDC, or PaaS, which can certainly be deployed on VMware-based IaaS or of course other alternatives.  It depends on what set of abstractions they are comfortable with even though any startup focused on Docker needs to swing the needle to their side in order to better justify their existence.  I am a fan of Cloud Foundry and PaaS in general, but I don’t believe that every app will be run at that layer of abstraction.  But hey, maybe that last statement will be one of those quotes like “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”  I am just thankful to be working with such a diverse group of customers to keep this in perspective as well as get to play at the bleeding/leading edge.

Additional links:
https://groups.google.com/a/cloudfoundry.org/forum/#!topic/vcap-dev/V-lVpMpNqL4/discussion
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DDBJlLJ7rrsM1J54MBldgQhrJdPS_xpc9zPdtuqHCTI/edit

http://blog.cloudfoundry.org/2013/09/08/combining-voice-with-velocity-thru-the-cloud-foundry-community-advisory-board/