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Docker: Containers Healthy Despite Economy

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by Mike Vizard

In spite of the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears the development of container applications remains robust. Docker Inc. is reporting more than 11 billion pulls from the Docker Hub in July.

The company also revealed the number of repositories on Docker Hub has grown to 7 million from 6 million in the last year, while the number of Docker Hub users has grown to 7 million from 5 million in the same period.

Docker Inc. also reports there are now 2.9 million installations of Docker Desktop, with 57% of those installations on Macs and 43% for Windows.

Since Docker Inc. launched in 2014, there have been 242 billion pulls from repositories, the company revealed. In addition, 160+ Official Images stored on those repositories represent north of 20% of all pulls.

The images most often pulled through July of 2020, representing more than 1 billion, are:

  • NGINX: Load balancer and reverse proxy server software that is widely used in both monolithic and microservices-based applications.
  • BusyBox: A suite of software used most often on embedded systems that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file.
  • httpd: An instance of Apache HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) server software designed to be run as a standalone daemon process.
  • PostgreSQL: An open source relational database that supports both SQL and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) queries.
  • Redis: An in-memory data structure store often used as a database, cache and message broker.
  • Memcached: A distributed object caching system that runs in memory.
  • Alpine: A lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and BusyBox.
  • Traefik: A reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices simpler on edge computing platforms.
  • Ubuntu: A distribution of Linux from Canonical that is widely employed on cloud computing platforms.
  • MongoDB: An open source document database that has gained traction as an alternative to relational databases.

John Kreisa, chief marketing officer for Docker Inc., says the continued rapid growth of pulls from Docker Hub is indicative of the robustness of a developer ecosystem that has sprung up around the platform. The growth in the number of developers employing Docker Desktop also remains steady, he notes, adding those numbers should increase steadily in the wake of extensions to alliances with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to make it easier to build and deploy container applications on public clouds.

There’s no doubt many organizations are employing containers to build cloud-native applications based on microservices that promise to be more flexible and robust than existing monolithic applications. Many of those projects are closely tied to digital business transformation initiatives that many organizations have accelerated in the wake of the pandemic.

Of course, more developers have been working from home these past few months as well. Given the pull rates on Docker Hub, it would appear developers are remaining productive despite any potential distractions. The question now is whether all the developer activity will result in a wave of container applications being deployed in production environments in the months ahead.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a veteran IT journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the technology industry, having previously served as Editor-in-Chief of both CRN and InfoWorld and as editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he oversaw titles including eWEEK, CIO Insight and Baseline. Over his career he has also edited or contributed to a wide range of enterprise technology publications, including IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, ComputerWorld, TMCNet and Digital Review, and he later led editorial for CTOEdge.com. His reporting and analysis span software development, cloud computing, cybersecurity, IT channel strategy and, more recently, artificial intelligence and DevOps practices. A recognized voice in enterprise IT journalism, Vizard is known for tracking emerging technology trends as they move from early adoption into mainstream enterprise use. He now serves as Chief Content Officer for Techstrong Group, where he oversees editorial strategy across the full network — DevOps.com, Security Boulevard, Cloud Native Now, Digital CxO, Techstrong.ai, TechStrong.IT, Techstrong Semi and PlatformEngineering.com — in addition to writing and hosting content for Techstrong TV and the Techstrong Gang podcast.

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