I want my Docker!
No, I’m not talking about the $29.99 special pair of pants you can get at the store. The Docker I’m referring to is maybe the next big disruptive technology since virtualization laid the foundation for cloud computing. Docker software is a container technology similar to virtualization that can help companies reduce the maintenance and overhead of virtual machines, saving time and processing resources – and will most certainly impact your software monetization strategies. Container advantages include:
- Greater Application Mobility
- Workloads can move between private and public clouds more quickly, by orders of magnitude – instead of transferring gigabytes (virtual image) between clouds, containers are lightweight typically ranging in megabytes
- Faster Provisioning
- Unlike a virtual machine where it can take 10 minutes or longer to boots, container can boot up in seconds because it has smaller payload and doesn’t have any overhead of a hypervisor or guest operating system
- Fewer Operating Systems to Maintain
- Each container instance shares the same resources as the host (can be physical or virtual) and at the same time is isolated and running as if it is an independent virtual machine
- Easier Application Patching
- Container images are made up of layers and can be patched by just adding additional layers – one layer does not affect the other
- Easier OS Patching
- Unlike virtual machines where 10 virtual machines will have 10 operating systems that require all to be updated, a containerized server with 10 applications has only one operating systems to update
As noted above there are many advantages to container technology which will likely impact software licensing, especially as workload hosting where the approach is to prevent workloads from moving from one host to another. If you haven’t already, perhaps it’s time to truly embrace usage-based licensing to capture and monetize the workload!
