Docker raises $40M to scale its open source platform

Steven Loeb · September 16, 2014 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/392b

This funding comes only months after Docker raised a $15 million round earlier this year

(Updated with comment from Docker)

As you might imagine, creating and maintaining apps has become more difficult, and complex, in recent years. Now, instead of apps being built on top of single tech stack and a single server, there are many different versions of the apps being created across different servers, and lot of different tech stacks. Frankly, its a waste of time and it makes it harder for developers to deploy.

Docker, the commercial entity behind the open source Docker project, has made it its mission to make app deployment simple again. And the VC world has taken notice: just eight months after raising its last round of funding, is back with a fresh new pile of cash.

The company has now raised $40 million in series C funding, it was announced on Tuesday, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Jerry Yang.

Docker had previously raised $27 million in funding, including a $15 million Series B round in January of this year, and a $10 million Series A in 2011. This latest round brings the company's total funding raising to $67 million. The company is now reportedly valued at $400 million.

This funding round illustrates the unprecedented growth that Docker is experiencing and the outstanding community that has developed around the open source project. Since DockerCon in June, Docker has gone from 3 million to 21 million downloads and there are now over 35,000 “Dockerized” applications. In addition, web-scale companies including Gilt, Groupon, eBay, Spotify and many more are relying on Docker to increase business efficiencies," Docker CEO Ben Golub told me.

"Docker provides a groundbreaking approach for building, shipping and running applications, and this funding round is a testament to that."

Docker is an open source project that provides a container for developers to be able to run their applications, test them, and scale them, so they can work on multiple platforms, and environments. The company enables any application, and its dependencies, to be encapsulated as a lightweight container.

Once that container is created (either iteratively or automatically from source), it will run consistently, without delay or overhead, in almost any Linux environment: bare metal, virtualized, public cloud, or private cloud.

Docker was started inside application platform company dotCloud. It was released in March 2013 and became so successful that it has since become the primary focus of the company, which even officially changed its name to Docker in October. The company sold off dotCloud to cloudControl last month. 

The company is growing quickly: Docker platform has now been downloaded over 21 million times, up from only 3 million in June. There are now over 35,000 “Dockerized” applications available on the Docker Hub Registry, and more than 13,000 Docker-related projects have launched on GitHub.

Companies like Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat and VMware having all announced Docker–supporting platform initiatives.

"We will use the funds to drive adoption of the platform in the enterprise and to broaden Docker’s rapidly growing ecosystem of application developers, system administrators, platform providers, and technology partners. However, we just recently began using our funding from the series B round in January and don’t plan on touching this new round until much later," said Golub.

"As for roadmap items, we are hoping to release commercial enterprise software in the near future given the accelerated adoption of Docker by enterprises. Enterprises will be able to purchase the software, which will include features similar to Docker Hub, but can be deployed on premise."

In addition to the funding news, it was also announced that Bill Coughran, who joined Sequoia after eight years as a senior vice president of engineering at Google, will now be joining the board of directors at Docker.

(Image source: docker.com)

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Docker, Inc. (formely known as dotCloud) is the company behind the open-source Docker project and the growing Docker ecosystem of people, products, platforms, and partners revolutionizing the way code is built, packaged, and deployed.

Our Mission

Docker aims to enable a new age of agile and creative development, by building "the button" that enables any code to instantly and consistently run on any server, anywhere.

Docker is an open source engine that enables any application to be deployed as a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere. By delivering on the twin promises "Build Once…Run Anywhere” and “Configure Once…Run Anything," Docker has seen explosive growth, and its impact is being seen across devops, PaaS, scale-out, hybrid cloud and other environments that need a lightweight alternative to traditional virtualization. (Click here to read more about Docker.)

The people of Docker, Inc. are the original authors and the primary contributors to and maintainers of the Docker project. We also run the platforms and systems that make the Docker project run, including the Docker public Indexand provide materials and support to the rapidly expanding Docker community.


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