CliQr Adds Docker Support to Cloud Management Platform 

The hype around Docker containers has been offset recently by the reality that the application delivery software has yet to make a significant move from development and testing to production workloads.

While 2015 is increasingly seen as a make-or-break year for emerging container technology, Docker adoption by cloud providers continues to gain momentum. For instance, hybrid cloud management specialist CliQr Technologies of Santa Clara, Calif., announced at the end of January it would support Docker containers in its CloudCenter platform. Support for Docker along with existing tools for managing applications across private and public clouds would expand its ability to deploy single, multiple or composite container/virtual machine application configurations.

In supporting Docker containers on its CloudCenter platform, CliQr said it is targeting what is sees as growing demand for management tools that can help organize and orchestrate thousands of containers.

CliQr asserts that its platform also helps application developers to determine the best means of executing containerized applications. A benchmarking feature is said it allow containerized and non-containerized applications with different configurations to be deployed simultaneously across multiple private and public clouds.

In that way, the company said, developers can focus on applications rather than the specifics and dependencies of the underlying infrastructure. Docker can deliver the application while CliQr's platform handles orchestration via composite containers, virtual machines and platform services, CliQr Co-Founder and CTO Tenry Fu explained in a statement announcing Docker support.

The company laid out its Docker strategy in a blog post, arguing that container technology also is finding its way into mainstream IT production environments. "Containers are not just for cloud providers and web-scale apps with micro services architectures," wrote Kurt Milne, CliQr's vice president of product marketing. "Containers will be used in the enterprise for both new and traditional multi-tier applications."

Still, the hybrid cloud management company doesn't expect application containers to completely dominate enterprise IT, leaving room for other distributed application approaches. Hence, the company is betting that IT administrators will want to manage applications using both containers and other topologies.

Hence, CliQr's CloudCenter software-as-a-service hedges the company's bet on Docker by offering a composite application framework that works with and without containers. In addition, containers can be deployed via a single virtual machine. Finally, customers have the option of selecting a single container from the public Docker Hub.

Last August, CliQr rolled out new features for its CloudCenter management platform including "drag and drop" application profiling and several image management options.

At the same time, it also announced a partnership with NTT Innovation Institute, the R&D arm of the Japanese telecommunications giant, to deliver lifecycle management for new and existing applications. These include a suite of hybrid cloud management services for NTT clouds.

"Full scale deployment of Linux containers will need to co-exist with non-containerized environments, and meet production requirements that go beyond the need for speed—areas which the community is still figuring out," NTT CTO Mayan Mathen explained.

Another CliQr customer said developers using container technology need support for using composition containers as well as virtual machines as IT administrators continue to work out deployment and management issues.