What Is Docker and Why Is It So Darn Popular?

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If you’re in data center or cloud IT circles, you’ve been hearing about containers in general and Docker in particular non-stop for a few years now. With the release of Docker 1.0 in June 2014, the buzz became a roar.

Three years later, Docker is bigger than ever. Forrester analyst Dave Bartoletti thinks only 10 percent of enterprises currently use containers in production now, but up to a third are testing them. 451 Research agrees. By 451’s count, container technologies, most of it Docker, generated $762 million in revenue in 2016. In 2020, 451 forecasts revenue will reach $2.7 billion, for a 40 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

So why does everyone love containers and Docker? James Bottomley, fomerly Parallels‘ CTO of server virtualization and a leading Linux kernel developer, explained VM hypervisors, such as Hyper-V, KVM, and Xen, all are “based on emulating virtual hardware. That means they’re fat in terms of system requirements.”

Read more at ZDNet