I’ve said it before, this are fun times to watch Microsoft. The company is being forced into agility, and seeing their recent announcements with Docker is a perfect example. If containerization had taken off in the late 90s Microsoft, they would have implemented their own solution, and tried to block or sue any competitors off of x86. Not exactly the warm and fuzzies.
Today, Microsoft is supporting Docker natively on Server 2016. Jon Hildebrand seems pretty excited in his piece about it. For him, the big feature is that Windows is supporting two different cores for their Docker images. The first is a more legacy heavy full featured blend of Windows, minus the bloated GUI elements. But the more exciting is the Nano core, which is extremely lightweight, and points the way for the future of the platform in the data center.
I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the legacy core Microsoft is also providing. The lure of crusty old Win32 apps is a strong one indeed, and it’s a wise move to provide both. There were a lot of rumors floating around the last two years that Microsoft would end up buying Docker. But with this level of native support, I’m not sure what this new agile Redmond company has to gain.
Jon Hildebrand comments:
There’s starting to become a major timeline distinction between those of us in the IT industry. There are those of us who grew up in the industry with Microsoft being the evil empire and those that are coming into IT and seeing Microsoft as company embracing the very thing it said it never would and, dare I say, championing the use of open source technologies. I know I fall into the camp of having to deal with Microsoft at it’s very peak of being a closed company. Back in the days of the domination of Win32 based applications, I never could have imagined what has transpired with Microsoft in the past few years (and specifically in the last 12 months).
Read more at: Docker? On Windows? Yep!
