Docker and Red Hat Expand Collaboration Around Container Technologies

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – RED HAT SUMMIT - APRIL 18, 2014 – Docker, the commercial entity behind the Docker.io project, the industry's leading container solution, and Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a deeper relationship that builds on the existing technology collaboration between the companies. As part of the expanded collaboration, Docker and Red Hat will work together on interoperability between Docker's hosted services and Red Hat certified container hosts and services.

The rapid rise of the Docker project reflects the IT industry's growing recognition of the importance of standardized, open source, container-based approaches to application creation, deployment, and management. Long a leader in Linux container technologies, Red Hat began working closely with the Docker team in September 2013. Since then Red Hat has worked to extend Docker for inclusion in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with new production-grade file-system options, integrated systemd process management, and use of SELinux to provide military-grade security. Red Hat has also packaged Docker for Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and launched the Red Hat Container Certification in March 2014. Building on these efforts, Red Hat and Docker are deepening collaboration around Docker container technologies. Red Hat will bring Docker container technologies into the high-touch beta program for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and to OpenShift, its award-winning Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering.

Application containers have emerged as an essential solution for developers and IT operations teams, one that provides both a flexible way to build and deploy applications, while significantly reducing the time and expense associated with underlying cloud infrastructure. Emerging as the de facto standard for containerization in the Linux community, Docker technology offers benefits to developers, system administrators, and DevOps alike.

"Red Hat has a long history of developing, investing in and fostering innovative technologies, including Linux Containers, an open source methodology that has seen numerous, fundamental contributions from Red Hat over the years," said Brian Stevens, executive vice president and CTO, Red Hat. "The Docker technology, which helps eliminate the barriers facing enterprise adoption of containers — ease of use, application packaging and infrastructure integration — was very exciting to us. We believe that integrating Red Hat and Docker technologies offers both powerful developer capabilities and a lightweight application packaging approach for enterprise workloads across industries. By working together, we can bring an extended set of capabilities to not only Red Hat customers, but to the open source and Linux community at large."

Customer benefits include:
• Expansion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 High-Touch Beta Program to include Docker container technologies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is currently in beta and is targeted to be a Red Hat certified container host, with Docker as a primary supported container format.
• Red Hat certification of Dockerized applications: As announced previously, Red Hat plans to extend its ecosystem to include certified applications built as Docker Containers.
• Broad Docker integration with OpenShift: Application containers in OpenShift will be integrated with Docker and support Red Hat certified ISV applications packaged in the Docker container format. These same containerized applications will also be supported on other Red Hat products.
• Complementary support services: In addition to the support provided with Red Hat subscription services, customers will be able to leverage developer support services from Docker, Inc. when Docker 1.0 is released.
• Docker JumpStart Program for Red Hat customers: Docker plans to announce a special starter program for organizations looking to create pilot projects around the use of Docker in conjunction with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift. The program will offer Docker on Red Hat Enterprise Linux training, architectural review, installation support for Docker Registry, and Docker Commercial support.

"Industry interest in containers in general, and Docker in particular, has grown considerably in the past year," said Al Hilwa, program director at IDC. "Red Hat's embrace of this technology marks an important milestone, as it demonstrates that Docker and containerization have become suitable for many production environments. Organizations looking to simplify application deployment and improve operational efficiency and infrastructure utilization should consider standardized containerization approaches such as Docker."

Highlighting the growth of the standard, key Docker milestones from the past year include:
• Contributions from more than 400 developers;
• More than one million downloads;
• More than 8,000 "Dockerized" applications in Docker's public index; and
• A boom in community activity, with more than 70 meetup groups in 27 countries.

"We are thrilled by the results of our collaboration with Red Hat to date," said Ben Golub, CEO of Docker. "As leaders in open source, Red Hat has recognized the importance of building a robust, open ecosystem. Their level of commitment to the Docker ecosystem has been tremendous, and we look forward to delivering on a broad range of solutions for their customers."