Docker has taken a major step toward broader and deeper corporate adoption with the release of an enterprise ediition of its open-source application container platform. Here are the key details from an official blog post:
Today we are announcing Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), a new version of the Docker platform optimized for business-critical deployments. Docker EE is supported by Docker Inc., is available on certified operating systems and cloud providers and runs certified Containers and Plugins from Docker Store. Docker EE is available in three tiers: Basic comes with the Docker platform, support and certification, and Standard and Advanced tiers add advanced container management (Docker Datacenter) and Docker Security Scanning.
For consistency, we are also renaming the free Docker products to Docker Community Edition (CE) and adopting a new lifecycle and time-based versioning scheme for both Docker EE and CE.
Docker EE is supported on CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, SUSE Linux, Oracle Linux and Windows Server. It's also available on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. In addition, Docker is rolling out a certification program for ISV containers than run on Docker.
Docker has signed up a number of partners that will support Docker EE, including Alibaba, Canonical, HPE, IBM and Microsoft, as well as smaller regional firms.
Docker CE includes the full core platform but there are also paid add-on services available for areas such as continuous integration and security. It will be released on a monthly and quarterly basis, in "Edge" and "Stable" editions. Users can take their pick depending on how quickly they want to adopt new features.
In contrast, Docker EE will get quarterly releases, with backported patches and security fixes, and support for each release for a full year. All told, the features will give "Docker EE subscribers the confidence they need to run business critical apps on Docker," the company said.
"This is a good move by Docker, as load portability across clouds is high on the list for CxOs building next-gen apps," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "So far, multi-cloud deployments have either eluded enterprises or has come with a high price. So it is good to see solutions coming up to make this easier, though the real challenges are in data, data availabiity and replication, as the recent AWS outage has shown. But data and code need to go together, so getting code distributed across IaaS is a key step."
Overall, Docker EE should see more strategic adoption of the container technology, from the C-suite versus ground-up from individual developers or teams. It and CE can also be seen as a response to unrest among its user and partner community, some of which have expressed concerns over the speed of Docker's release schedule and resulting instability.
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