14 DAY TRIAL // Google is getting ready to combine its cloud computing services with Docker, an open-source project that automates the deployment of applications inside software containers.
According to Wired, Google sees Docker as a tool that can change the way building software is looked at because it makes it easy to tap into massive amounts of computing power.
“Google and Docker are a very natural fit. We both have the same vision of how applications should be built,” said Eric Brewer, Google engineer and former computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he built the first web search engine to run on a vast network of machines.
It looks like Google wants to use Docker to get everyone to do the same thing that the company has been doing for years, and that is to take advantage of its tools to their full potential.
Wired reports that on Tuesday, Google will make the big announcement – it will combine Docker with Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine. Not only will this fuel interest in its own services, but it will also bring more popularity to the service that has been dubbed “the next big thing in cloud computing.”
While there is a risk for the move to encourage developers to migrate their tools off Google’s platform, there’s a bigger chance for more people to start using the product.
Docker allows software makers to package their tools so that they can be moved from machine to machine in an easy manner, making the transfer across hundreds of locations an easy process.
“Consisting of Docker Engine, a portable, lightweight runtime and packaging tool, and Docker Hub, a cloud service for sharing applications and automating workflows, Docker enables apps to be quickly assembled from components and eliminates the friction between development, QA, and production environments,” reads the company’s own description of the tool.
This translates into faster shipping time of the same app from the IT department to laptops, data center virtual machines or cloud platforms.
There is still a lot of work to be done for this Linux-based system. In order to run Docker containers, a machine must already run additional software that is designed to operate in the same way on any version of Linux. However, according to Google’s Brewer, things don’t always work out and a container running on one operating system may not run on another, which is something that Google and the community must work on.