Docker, a new business star

This entry is a continuation of the In praise of Open - Proprietary hybrid software releases   It is a business case of the modern use of open source concept.

Danese Cooper, ex Sun, aka the Open Source Diva is a follower of  Meher Baba, the Irani Indian spiritual teacher. She writes

"I believe that the Open Source Methodology of increased transparency in software development (and possibly also in hardware development) can only have a positive effect on the technology we deliver to customers. The marriage of Open Source to traditional software development has created some interesting hybrid (part Open part Proprietary) models which I believe hold up favorably against entirely traditional methods in both time to market and satisfaction of market demand."

Docker is a San Francisco based startup. illustrating Danese's  vision. They started as dotCloud Inc.  and changed name and business model in October 2013.

In dotCloud,  one builds an ideal application stack by combining powerful cloud services. Go live and only pay for what you need.

But Docker is an open source engine that packages any application as a lightweight, portable container that runs consistently virtually anywhere.

What this means? The best explanation I read in  TechCrunch

Originally designed as a platform as a service (PaaS), Docker showed promise for its flexible capabilities in providing developers with a service that supported multiple programming languages. But the competition from companies like Heroku and VMware’s Cloud Foundry made for a challenging market, further exacerbated by the lack of a widespread market acceptance for the benefits that PaaS providers offered.

But developers did need a way to move their code to cloud services in a lightweight way without the tax of heavy virtual machines that were difficult to move and required a degree of manual integration. The problem stemmed from the virtualization technology itself, which sits below the operating system. It virtualizes the server, not the app. And because of that, the operating system has to move in order to run the app wherever it might be transported. Once delivered, it has to be booted up and configured to run with the database and the rest of the stack that it depends on.

With Docker, the container sits on top of the operating system. The only thing that moves is the code. The developer does not have to boot and config. Instead, the container syncs with the cloud service.

Once an application is in a Docker container, it is "Dockerized". Note that Docker is a platform product and breakthrough product. See why here . It has the potential for a maximum valuation, can not compare with a derivative product company which limits itself in doing new versions of the same product year after year, just to keep the market or not have users run to competing services

Ethan Kurzweil, partner at Bessemer Venture partners wrote this month in his blog 

The democratization of technology resources will be a central driver of technology change this decade. While there are 18 million developers in the world, there are 400 million information workers. These information workers are increasingly accustomed to using online and mobile software in their personal lives — as the meteoric rise of social media and mobile apps has shown. ... However, these tech nativists cannot test or complete basic changes without the input of a developer, creating a massive bottleneck in the implementation of their ideas.

If one technology democratize technology resources and let the ideas fly, this is Docker.
This was the response:

[Docker] launched the open-source effort last spring and the acceptance has been almost unprecedented.

“I have never seen a technology take off as quickly as Docker and get the type of broad-based adoption that it is getting,” said Dan Scholnick of Trinity Ventures in a phone interview last week. “ If you look at the absolute numbers — the number of Docker containers downloaded, the number of docker containers created — they are off the charts. What is more interesting, the adoption is not just coming from startup or certain types of companies. The adoption is across companies of all sizes and industry verticals. It is a combination of high-growth and broad-based adoption that is really amazing.”

By going Open Source, what is the business model? Ben Golub, CEO of Docker, ex Gluster and ex-Sun says for 2014 the plans are

• Managed services for Developers
• Managed services for DevOps/Sys Admins
• Providing Docker professional service, support, and training, through a network of certified providers backed by a Level III relationship with Docker, Inc.

In weeks after doCloud changed the business model to Docker,

The company has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Greylock Partners, with minority participation from Insight Venture Partners and existing investors Benchmark Capital and Trinity Ventures. Also participating is Yahoo! Co-Founder Jerry Yang,.

What you probably don't know is that Docker is on the list of 10 Startups you didn’t know were founded by French Entrepreneurs

Solomon Hykes. Docker co-founder

Co-founder Solomon Hykes, along with Marketing Director Julien Barbier, are part of in While42, a private network of French engineers around the world.  (Paris, San Francisco, Miami).

It also shows a 21st company continuous  iteration of product can lead to such revolutionary and lucrative discoveries.

The subject of migrating applications from one grid to another, from one cluster another was one of the most difficult. It mal-created a class of arrogant systems engineers w.ho were sending everyone to learn how to code, so they can win the Nobel prize.

Dockerizing is a great discoveries and I will be not surprised to see Solomon Hykes as the next French Zuckerberg.

Post Scriptum

Docker Weekly: January 29th 2014 . Thank you Docker for quoting my blog !http://t.co/mdfFHqQaxj

— Miha Ahronovitz (@myinnervoice) February 4, 2014