Big Changes in Goldman’s Software Emerge From Small Containers - The CIO Report - WSJ

Big Changes in Goldman’s Software Emerge From Small Containers - The CIO Report - WSJ:

“I have lived through all sorts of tech transitions, and this is faster than anything we have seen,” Docker CEO Ben Golub said. Docker usage increased five times during the past year, and Docker images have been downloaded more than two billion times. Docker said it is the second-largest open-source infrastructure project.

“Think of docker as two things: a format for packaging apps and an engine to run those apps,” Forrester Research analyst Dave Bartoletti said in an email. “Docker is quickly becoming the de facto standard for packaging. You can RUN dockerized apps on lots of different engines. And then when you run them, you can pick from a wide range of orchestration tools, management tools, monitoring tools, etc.”

There was concern that Docker, the company, had too much power, as both the custodian of the open-source software and a venture that sold products and services tied to it, according to Mr. Duet. In response, Docker, the company, helped form the Open Container Initiative to govern the open-source software.

Goldman uses the Docker containerization service, as well as container orchestration tools from Docker and Alphabet Inc GOOGL +0.50%.’s Google, which makes an orchestration and cluster management tool called Kubernetes, comparable to Docker Swarm. “We do both, Docker and Kubernetes, for things like running and starting,” Mr. Duet said. “Kubernetes is arguably a better scheduler…if you are going to run 1,000 containers on 1,500 computers…It is designed much more for that. Docker’s own product is great if you want to run five containers on three machines. We have both problems.”

A Docker spokesman said that “even when people use Kubernetes, they are still using the Docker container service. Some, such as Goldman, continue to use Kubernetes for larger deployments and Docker Swarm for smaller, as Docker Swarm was only made generally available in Fall of 2015 and is still being evaluated for large-scale use.”

For Goldman, the shift is part of a larger evolution, as the bank takes on more of the characteristics of a tech company. Says Mr. Duet: “We look more like Google and Amazon in many ways.”