Global IT networking company Cisco and open source platform Docker have entered a strategic alliance for worldwide engineering, sales and support to deliver essential container capabilities for application-centric data center and cloud infrastructure.
The partnership will allow customers to modernize applications using Docker Enterprise Edition with Docker Datacenter, and deliver them securely and efficiently across Cisco Unified Computing System and Cisco validated Converged Infrastructure solutions with Cisco partners.
Docker EE with Docker Datacenter running on Cisco UCS will provide application developers a way to deploy, iterate, re-deploy, and monitor applications onto production infrastructure. The alliance will deliver unified and certified solutions for the entire application journey, whether organizations are containerizing traditional applications, refactoring applications to microservices, or creating new applications.
The partnership news came after Docker introduced its Enterprise Edition, which is a new version of the Docker platform optimized for business-critical deployments. It claims to establis the foundation for a Containers as a Service (CaaS) model that becomes the framework for an enterprise software supply chain where any applications (traditional and microservices) can be managed centrally and uniformly across any infrastructure.
“The powerful combination of Cisco’s leading UCS product line for Cloud infrastructure and Docker’s containerized technology will offer customers high levels of security, manageability and scale,” said Liz Centoni, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Computing Systems Product Group, Cisco.
“Developers and IT, working together, can now build, ship, and deploy container applications anywhere.”
Joint sales and support programs across Docker, Cisco and Cisco channel partners ensure that Docker EE works seamlessly for applications deployed across hybrid cloud, converged infrastructure, converged storage, hyperconverged infrastructure, and Cisco servers. Enterprise customers have the assurance of Cisco-supported Docker platform as part of this strategic relationship.
“Enterprises are increasingly looking to Docker to modernize their traditional applications so their investment in Linux and Windows Server applications can achieve major operational efficiencies while making these applications more agile, cloud-ready and more secure,” said Ben Golub, CEO, Docker.
“This strategic partnership brings even more opportunity for these enterprises by running Dockerized applications on a validated Cisco UCS infrastructure that is optimized for security, availability, performance and scale.”
Cisco and Docker plan to deliver joint solutions, available through three partner channels, namely; Contiv, Cisco Validated Design for Docker Data Center on Cisco UCS, and on Flexpod with Docker Data Center for Container Management.
The alliance with Docker will extend benefits of Cisco’s data center architectures to container environments, and the two companies will collaborate going forward to bring additional solutions to the marketplace. The three solutions are available online and can be downloaded from Docker Store and GitHub.