In the race to move to hybrid cloud, enterprises are looking at containers to increase efficiency and developer productivity, according to a new study.

Of the more than 200 enterprise IT decision makers polled by CoreOS and 451 Research, their usage of containers was relatively even across the board. A quarter (24%) said they had a broad implementation of production applications, while 17% said they were still as the discovery and evaluation stage.

When it came to the drivers of container usage, greater efficiency (33%) and hybrid cloud and cross-cloud integration (32%) were the most frequently cited. The most popular benefit was developer productivity, cited by 30% of respondents, just ahead of efficiency (29%), but these numbers not surprisingly swung for DevOps (55% developer productivity) and infrastructure (37% efficiency) workers respectively.

Docker Swarm was cited as the most popular orchestration platform overall (36%), ahead of report sponsors CoreOS (27%), Kubernetes (22%) and Mesos (14%). For the largest organisations – those with 5,000 or more employees – Kubernetes saw a rise to 27%, with CoreOS going down to 19%.

The report also found that twice as many IT operations workers were identified as the primary users of containers – in other words, not developers – while a similar trend occurred with purchasing, albeit noting a ‘growing developer influence’ on this area.

“Organisations are looking for ways to create a consistent developer deployment model across on-premises and hybrid clouds,” said Jay Lyman, principal analyst at 451 Research in a statement. “The need to empower developers, the push to realise the benefits of public clouds and need to support mission critical on-premise applications have created multiple computing environments within the enterprise.

“In order to manage this increasingly chaotic IT infrastructure and avoid the mistakes of the past, organisations are turning to container software to deliver a single platform for application deployment across clouds and operationalised efficiency across the organisation,” Lyman added.

According to a report from NetEnrich last July surveying 200 IT professionals, two thirds of respondents described learning the likes of Docker, Kubernetes and Mesos as ‘moderately challenging’. CoreOS was the most popular main container technology cited by 33%, ahead of Kubernetes (32%), Docker (25%) and Joyent (11%).

As a result, it can be assumed that the technology’s usage is proliferating, if a major player has not quite burst through yet. 451 Research concludes that “given these survey results and the strong, growing production use not only of containers, but also container management and orchestration software at this early stage of the market, we expect the container market’s momentum to continue through 2017.”

Speaking at the OpenStack Summit in Boston last month, Edward Snowden warned that the use of public cloud providers is ‘fundamentally disempowering’.

As reported by ZDNet, Snowden told the audience – through video conference, of course – that ‘we can’t let people be mindless when they’re building clouds.’ “You give them money, and they provide you with a service, but you are also providing them with more than money. You’re giving up control, influence.”

But what does this mean in terms of keeping vital workloads in the public cloud? Below, industry experts weigh in on the issues:

David Griffiths, VP of EMEA, Tintri

Many have been quick to recognise the benefits delivered by public cloud, but what is also clear are the sacrifices made when it comes to control over data. The public cloud provides agility and ability to scale, however, as Snowden explains, often at the cost of freedom to shape an environment to specific workload requirements.

Put simply, pouring money into a third-party infrastructure that companies have no real ownership of doesn’t make good budgetary, business or security sense – especially when the technology exists to provide the same scale and efficiency within their own data centre.

Enterprise cloud, however, provides public cloud-like agility allowing organisations to benefit from similar applications and services. Additionally, it allows for massive scale-out with the security, privacy and governance levels you would expect from a private environment. Alongside predictive analytics, granular-level abstraction and the ability to automate, it ensures organisations know exactly where their data is at any given time.

Gary Watson, founder and VP of technical engagement at Nexsan

One of the main points Snowden addresses is the ability for third party providers to access encrypted user data. Trusting a third-party provider with data is a step that should be very carefully considered. In today’s digital age, data is the lifeblood of any organisation and it is fundamental that organisations can guarantee control, security and locality. However, there is no doubt that organisations require the flexibility and agility of the cloud, as it promotes a more collaborative way of working and we are certainly seeing an uptake in cloud-based solutions.

On-premises private cloud solutions are available, which allow organisations the benefits of the cloud while keeping data on site through a privately-owned appliance. Forward thinking organisations that can incorporate the agility and flexibility of the cloud while still being able to maintain control over security and data locality will be in a far better position in the market. In order to do this, it is key that businesses understand their unique data needs and opt for a solution that will enable secure, reliable access.

Jake Madders, director at Hyve Managed Hosting

No one can deny that public cloud is a hugely successful IT innovation that shows no signs of slowing down. While there are numerous benefits to entrusting your data with one of the big public providers, there are also considerable drawbacks when it comes to performance, security and compliance with an unmanaged public cloud. AWS-like auto-scaling cannot identify bottlenecks and over-used resources in the way a Managed Service Provider (MSP) can, nor can an unmanaged public environment provide the same level of security and adherence to regulation, which is especially important with big changes surrounding GDPR about to take place.

Working with an MSP can guarantee optimum service levels across all platforms, taking the best aspects from each, all while offering continual support for business looking to make the best out of cloud computing.

Paul Mills, group sales director at Six Degrees Group

Edward Snowden’s comments raise some interesting considerations, but adopting public cloud should not be about giving up control.  Public cloud services have an important role to play for organisations of any size and can provide a significant springboard to business transformation when used in the right way.  

However, in choosing any type of cloud service – public, private or hybrid – privacy, governance and regulation need to be at the forefront of the decision-making process to keep you in the driving seat and to ensure the correct services are chosen.  There are many options available and organisations should plan this activity carefully, seeking advice from their trusted technology partners to ensure they find the best solution to meet their needs.

To celebrate Parallels’ birthday we wanted to spotlight co-founder Nikolay Dobrovolskiy. He power-boosted his career early as the winner of the Russian National Software Development Competition at the age of 14. Nick’s accomplishments with technology propelled his professional career as a software engineer. Flashback to the ’90s, when a simple need kick-started the revolution of […]

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SYS-CON Events announced today that CA Technologies has been named “Platinum Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 21st International Cloud Expo®, which will take place October 31-November 2, 2017, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. CA Technologies helps customers succeed in a future where every business – from apparel to energy – is being rewritten by software. From planning to development to management to security, CA creates software that fuels transformation for companies in the application economy. With CA software at the center of their IT strategy, organizations can leverage the technology that changes the way we live – from the data center to the mobile device. CA’s software and solutions help customers thrive in the new application economy by delivering the means to deploy, monitor and secure their applications and infrastructure.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that IBM has been named “Diamond Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 21st Cloud Expo, which will take place on October 31 through November 2nd 2017 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California.

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Gartner has released its latest Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure and a service (IaaS) – and while Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft will continue to get the plaudits, the real story is to be found nearer the bottom left.

As per 2016, AWS and Microsoft are the only two companies in the ‘leaders’ zone, with Google pushing hard in the ‘visionaries’ side, with Microsoft moving closer to AWS in terms of completeness of vision year over year.

Yet while there were only 10 vendors in the 2016 analysis – with this publication noting a more mature market as a result – 14 companies appear this year. New players, and some old faces, appearing in this edition include Interoute, Joyent – acquired by Samsung in August – and Skytap in the ‘niche players’ section, as well as Alibaba Cloud moving straight into the ‘visionaries’ section, alongside the likes of IBM and Oracle.

Naturally, AWS and Microsoft noted their delight at their continued performance in Gartner’s analysis. “Every product planning session at AWS revolves around customers – we do our best to listen and to learn, and to use what we hear to build the roadmaps for future development,” said Jeff Barr, AWS chief evangelist in a blog post. “I strongly believe that this customer-driven innovation has helped us to secure the top right corner of the Leaders quadrant for the seventh consecutive year.”

Barr said that 90% of the company’s roadmap was through customer requests, while Microsoft noted that more than 90% of the Fortune 500 use its cloud services, adding that it was a leader in no less than 13 Gartner MQs. “We strongly believe that the momentum we’re seeing has been possible because of what Azure offers and stands for – a comprehensive and secure cloud platform across IaaS and PaaS, unparalleled integration with Office 365, unique hybrid experience with Azure Stack, first-class support for Linux and open source tooling, and a robust partner ecosystem,” wrote Venkat Gattamneni, Azure director of product marketing.

The cautions for Microsoft were broadly similar to last year – not being as completely enterprise-ready as it could be, with a focus on API enablement – while AWS again had a note of caution sounded out around ease of use as well as the fact it “has just begun to adapt to the emergence of meaningful competitors.”

Alibaba, however, was praised for its potential to ‘become an alternative to the global hyperscale cloud providers in select regions over time’, with Gartner also noting its ‘financial wherewithal’ to continue investing in new regions. The company announced plans to debut in India and Indonesia earlier this month, for example. Its weakness, according to the analysts, is lacking mind share and a ‘limited track record’ outside of China.

Read more: How AWS and Azure’s competition improves public cloud adoption