Three Hot Open Source Cloud (Container) Projects Part III

It is nearly two years since I started writing about Docker, CoreOS (product CoreOS is now known as Container Linux) and Kubernetes.

Wow, what I can say things have gone crazy mad. Both Docker and CoreOS having securing funding last year have made major inroads in to communities and enterprises around the world. 

That said Kubernetes is one that is not a company has had the most attention in the last twelve months.  For obvious reasons Google was the first to put their public cloud support for Kubernetes, followed by Microsoft Azure and now I am hearing AWS is planning to do similar level of support (although nothing official from AWS yet). Hopefully something might come out of them as well.

While both Docker and CoreOS are growing their business and keep contributing to the community some of the key achievements in the last 12 months were the announcements of donating runC, containerD, rkt etc to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (https://cncf.io). CNCF was a busy foundation last year, having accepted several major projects such as Prometheus, linkerd, gRPC etc under their umbrella. 

Moby Project (https://mobyproject.org) was  one of the other most recent announcement from Docker at the DockerCon 2017. Moby project is an open source project allowing anyone to create a specialised container system without having to reinvent the wheel. What does this mean to Docker? Moving forward they too will utilise Moby project to assemble Docker. However at this stage they don't recommend you use Moby for building apps that users container for production deployment. 

So where I think these projects will head in the next 6-12 months?

Docker - I believe Docker will focus on helping enterprises with the adoption of containers and mostly in favour of Docker provided containers with their batteries. In addition to that I can see that they will try to build a community of certified vendors running their apps and services on Docker containers, professional service and training will also be a major part of their business. Any chance of them getting acquired? hmmmm interesting questions, however given their close relationship with Microsoft and seeing what Microsoft has done in the recent past there is a chance.

CoreOS - I believe they will continue on their current path as another competitor to Docker Inc. Will continue to contribute and use Kubernetes as their container cluster management toolset. While I have not seen CoreOS going after certification, professional services will be a big part of their offerings. Any chance of them getting acquired? Not very sure actually, however they may go for further funding for expansion or acquisitions.

Kubernetes - I believe the ecosystem will continue to grow regardless AWS put forward formal support or not. Kubernetes as a platform will grow into more complexities, and as Kelsey Hightower says we need to make Kubernetes absolutely boring for the increase in adoption. I see largely this will come from the ecosystem and cloud providers such as Google, Microsoft and I am hoping AWS to be the 3rd. Adoption in Enterprises will take place with the support of ecosystem players.