Docker announced its acquisition of SocketPlane, a start-up focused on Docker-native software defined networking. Financial terms were not disclosed.
SocketPlane, which was founded in Q4, 2014, has been an active participant in shaping the initial efforts around Docker’s open API for networking. The explicit focus of the SocketPlane team within Docker will be on collaborating with the partner community to complete a rich set of networking APIs that addresses the needs of application developers and network and system administrators alike. The company has six employees.
Docker brings networking to the application itself; all Docker containers can interact in concert as a distributed application securely over an IP infrastructure free from costly approaches like dedicated and proprietary application communication buses.
“Networking is a critical part of the stack for distributed applications and has become an increasing area of focus within the Docker partner ecosystem due to the rapid growth in multi-container, multi-host applications,” said Solomon Hykes, chief architect of the Docker Project and founder and CTO of Docker, Inc. “To sustain the velocity of community advancements in open, modular and secure Docker networking, we felt we needed to support those efforts with a dedicated team. Given the SocketPlane team’s collective experience with virtually every open source SDN effort, we felt they were the right people to carry forward our ‘batteries included, but swappable’ approach to drive a thriving networking ecosystem.”
“We started SocketPlane with a goal of creating the best networking solution in the Docker ecosystem,” said Madhu Venugopal, CEO of SocketPlane. “We’re now excited to be broadening that vision to support and empower the partner ecosystem to create the best solutions possible for users. Given the myriad of networking use cases enabled by Docker, we believe strongly that we will be fostering broad opportunities for partners to build differentiated capabilities based upon Docker’s open standards.”
