5 Reason Docker is a
Billion Dollar Company
Mike Kavis
Docker has recently joined the billion-dollar club.
But don’t roll your eyes, this dreamer may have what
it takes to live up to its valuation.
I have seen a lot of billion dollar valuations lately that have left me scratching
my head. Many of those are in the B2C or social media space where companies
are measured more on “eyeballs” (the number of active users) and less on things
like revenue or business models. So after Docker cracked the billion dollar club
with a $95M round I decided to research exactly what it is about containers
that could drive this type of valuation.
I have been covering Docker since the company, then called dotCloud, was toy-
ing around with the idea of pulling the Docker technology out of their core
product and releasing it as an open source project. I saw the value of containers
very early on. What I did not see coming was the vision that CEO Solomon
Hykes laid out before our eyes at Docker Con in San Francisco last month.
Hykes proclaimed for the next 5 years, Docker was going to “build a software
layer to make the Internet programmable.” Now that makes them much differ-
ent than simply being a container company. In fact, Hykes pointed out that
containers make up only about 5% of all Docker code. What is the other 95%
you may ask? It is a collection of tools to make “IT Plumbing” simple and agile.
The Docker toolbox has a wide variety of services in areas like orchestration,
security, integration, scheduling, networking, storage, and load balancing.
Docker is much more than containers. It is the new way to build applications in
a world where we are expected to deliver quickly in complex, heterogeneous
environments. To make more sense of this, I summed up the value of Docker in
the following 5 categories:
1) Future of Distributed Applications
Docker is building a toolbox for enterprises to assemble their own platforms. I
sat through multiple customer presentations and in each case customers were
using Docker (and myriad other tools) to create their own custom platforms.
50 | THE DOPPLER | WINTER 2016