On August 16, 2017 Docker announced the new release of Docker Enterprise Edition (EE). Docker EE is a Container-as-a-Service (CAAS) platform that provides a cross-platform, cross-architecture supply chain and deployment environment for software applications and microservices built to work in Windows, Linux and Cloud environments. The Docker container platform is integrated to the platform infrastructure to provide a native and optimized experience for the applications. Docker EE has the Docker tested and certified infrastructure, containers and plugins needed to run applications on Enterprise Platforms. The new Docker EE provides a container management platform that accommodates Windows, Linux and Mainframe apps and supports a broad range of infrastructure types.

According to Banjot Chanana, Head of Product Management for Docker:

“With Docker EE, organizations can shift more investment into innovation by reducing the costs of maintaining their existing applications, while increasing flexibility and security. Docker EE enables organizations to unite traditional applications and microservices built on Windows, Linux or mainframe onto a single, secure software supply chain, accelerating application delivery by 13x while reducing IT spend more than 50 percent.”

The salient features of the new release of Docker EE are:

Multi-Architecture Orchestration for Applications

Docker claims to enable organizations to modernize Windows, Linux and Mainframe applications by managing all of them in the same cluser. The definite advantage of this is centralization of access controls, security and operational policies etc across teams, departments and business units.

Secured Multi-tenancy for Organizations to Define Their Own IT Services Model 

With these, organizations are offered more flexibility and options to customize their IT services model using the new role-based access models. This allows sharing, allocation and collaboration of nodes and resources according to the business requirements. So teams and projects can now logically and physically compartmentalized without disrupting the workflow, roles and processes.

Enhanced Security and Integrity through Policy based Automation

The flow of an application from development to production can be securely automated and accelerated using features like automated image promotion, immutable repositories to prevent version overrides during promotion to production etc. This allows teams to focus on development quality and speed while organizational compliance to standards and quality are automatically ensured and maintained.

Docker is changing conventions?

With the new features like multi-tenancy, Role Based access control, integrated management and end to end security model, Docker EE is changing the tedious and complex workflows and policies for organizations. The level of abstraction and functionality Docker is offering certainly will enable organizations to focus on modernizing their software engineering and operational paradigms. This will certainly be a shift from the rigid and over-surveillance process implementation to a more relaxed and growth oriented service delivery and deployment model.