Explaining Docker to suits

I posted the following on an internal blog at Social Tables in an attempt to explain a bit about what our Software Engineering group was up to at the time.

What’s Docker you say? Glad you asked…

What’s Docker?

Docker’s a technology that allows us to wrap our applications & services as self-contained deliverables that are isolated from the host operating system upon which they are deployed.

What’s Docker … in English (preferably with pictures)?

So…visualize a long-haul shipping container.

Appreciate how much easier it makes moving cargo between ship, train, and truck.

In a similar way, Docker helps us package our software into shipping containers and we can then run that software unchanged on a laptop, a dedicated server, or a cloud platform.

So that’s a good thing?

Yes. Plus Docker’s mascot is a cute whale.