Top 5 Container Predictions for 2018

by David Messina, CMO, Docker

Prediction #1: The next big security breach will be foiled by containers

As we witnessed with the Equifax breach in early September, data breaches can place personal data at risk and in doing so, erode consumer confidence. But what if you could prevent a major breach by simply placing the software in a container? The Equifax breach occurred when a piece of web software was vulnerable and exposed to hackers. Containers act to reduce the attack surface available for exploitation, and in doing so greatly increase the difficulty and minimize the possibility of many forms of compromise. In many cases, simple steps like using read-only containers will fully mitigate a broad range of attack vectors.
                                                                                                                                                                    From being ephemeral and isolated in nature to enabling frequent patching and scanning against the latest CVEs, containers are vital to securing the software supply chain. Containers will be more widely relied upon in the coming year to combat future threats.

Prediction #2: Complexity and time to market will thwart PaaS adoption

As calls for accelerated cloud strategies only get louder across the Global 10K, it's becoming increasingly clear that outdated Platform as a Service (PaaS) frameworks are not equipped to handle the demand of managing all of the applications that are part of today’s modern enterprise. For the past few years, utilizing PaaS has been considered a cutting-edge approach to migrating your apps to the cloud. What is often overlooked, is the time required to set up PaaS frameworks, retrain employees and re-code each application - efforts that can take a year to drive and complete. In 2018, we expect to see PaaS adoption stall as enterprises recognize the time to value is too prolonged for the current and future pace of business. This will give way to accelerated Container as a Service (CaaS) platform adoption as enterprises look to migrate more workloads to the cloud while achieving greater agility, innovation, and cost-efficiencies.

Prediction #3: Containers will break the 80/20 Rule for IT budgeting 

It’s widely understood that CIOs typically commit 80% of their budget towards maintenance with only 20% left for innovation - a major roadblock in the path to digital transformation. We expect this to change in 2018 as CIOs rewrite the 80/20 rule in favor of innovation by unlocking new methods for managing and modernizing their legacy apps. In the past, application modernization required refactoring apps, ripping/replacing existing infrastructure and implementing new processes. Instead, enterprises are now using containerization for meaningful application modernization results in days. Organizations will reap the benefits of cloud portability and security while using the significant cost-efficiencies to reinvest their savings in more strategic digitization efforts.

Prediction #4: Security, not orchestration, will write the next chapter of containerization

2016 and yes even some of 2017 might have been about the orchestration wars but now that companies like Docker offer a choice of orchestration, some might argue that orchestration has been largely commoditized. With container adoption expected to grow into a nearly $3 billion dollar market by 2020 according to 451 Research and Docker itself experiencing more than one billion downloads bi-weekly, security will be the next frontier that companies need to address. Ironically, the threats will come from the applications themselves, making “container boundaries” an imperative for segmenting and isolating threats. The container boundary can also make it more difficult for an attacker to get the data out, resulting in detection. Securing the software supply chain will be paramount to safeguarding the application journey.

Prediction #5: CIOs will accelerate plans for digital transformation with containers

Although “digital transformation” has become somewhat of a buzzword as of late,  enterprises certainly accept the idea behind it - and with a greater sense of urgency. According to Gartner, as many as two-thirds of business leaders are concerned that their companies aren’t moving fast enough on the digital transformation front, leading to potential competitive disadvantages. In 2018, CIOs will increasingly feel the pressure to speed up digitization efforts and will accelerate their journey through containers. As businesses build out and implement strategies around cloud migration, DevOps and microservices, containers will play an increasingly important role in achieving these initiatives. By Dockerizing their applications, our enterprise customers have experienced the immediate benefits of digital transformation: faster app delivery times, portability across environments, hardened security and more.