The Forrester Multi-Cloud Container Development Platforms Wave Report, Reimagined With Docker Enterprise Container Cloud
- September 14, 2020
It's difficult to create a report defining the "state of the industry" for an industry that moves as fast as cloud computing. For example, Forrester recently published its Multi-Cloud Container Development Platforms Wave Report, covering nine leading vendors in the category, and in order to make the report "fair", every company was represented by the state of its offerings as of April 1, 2020.
Unfortunately, if you're a company whose new product offering didn't become generally available until, say April 2, 2020, those new offerings weren't considered in the report. For example, if this latest report were based on Mirantis' current products, support offerings, and services, as well as the Mirantis strategy/vision Mirantis would clearly have been ranked a Leader -- just as it was in the previous Forrester Wave Report.
Instead, because Forrester was (understandably) hamstrung by its rules it had to work with what was available on that date.
Unfortunately, if you're a company whose new product offering didn't become generally available until, say April 2, 2020, those new offerings weren't considered in the report. For example, if this latest report were based on Mirantis' current products, support offerings, and services, as well as the Mirantis strategy/vision Mirantis would clearly have been ranked a Leader -- just as it was in the previous Forrester Wave Report.
Instead, because Forrester was (understandably) hamstrung by its rules it had to work with what was available on that date.
What the Forrester Wave report left out
For Mirantis, this means the report couldn't take into account the following:- The Docker Enterprise Container Cloud release that will be available this coming week. Instead, it was based on Docker Enterprise 3.0, shipped back in 2019. Docker Enterprise Container Cloud key capabilities:
- Multi-Cluster Management
- Multi-Cloud: Public, Private, BM
- Self-Service Clusters
- Automated Full-Stack LCM
- Centralized Observability
- Add Existing Docker Enterprise Clusters to Fleet
- Lens Kubernetes IDE
- Our most recent support offerings ProdCare, a 24x7 follow-the-sun support offering, and OpsCare, a managed service offering with a 99.99% SLA and a cloud, tooling, and ops team 100% focused on the success of your organization.
- Our acquisition and strategic integration of Lens, the world’s most popular Kubernetes IDE, one of the top 30 Kubernetes-related projects on GitHub, with over 8,200 stargazers, 52,000 users, and 600,000 downloads.
Why Mirantis Is a Leader
Obviously we can't guarantee what the results would have been had the report been written today, but given our past experience, we're fairly certain that we would have maintained our position as a Leader. Inclusion of Docker Enterprise Container Cloud in the Mirantis profile would have significantly changed the score for each of the following Forrester Wave evaluation criteria:Platform Operations | |
| Docker Enterprise Container Cloud introduces groundbreaking multi-cluster, multi-cloud lifecycle operations capabilities. Operators and developers can easily create Kubernetes clusters via GUI or API, and the Container Cloud will automatically provision the underlying infrastructure, operating system, and cloud-native Kubernetes stack across public/private clouds and bare metal. Container Cloud keeps its management clusters and associated child clusters up to date with full-stack continuous updates. Every cluster is automatically updated using Kubernetes rolling updates, ensuring that workloads remain operational. With a single click, child cluster owners can decide when to apply available updates. Control plane configuration is managed by the Container Cloud. The management cluster is deployed via a bootstrap node and a YAML configuration file with details about the other management cluster nodes. Container Cloud takes care of the remaining deployment steps, with full-stack lifecycle management of the infrastructure, the operating system, and the cloud-native Kubernetes stack. Container Cloud includes cloud-native logging and monitoring across the entire fleet of clusters. Child cluster owners can observe and monitor real-time Prometheus metrics, review logs, receive alerts, and more. Centralized IT Operations can view data for any cluster as well as aggregated data for the entire fleet. Through built-in security features and policies, Container Cloud supports RBAC, IAM, LDAP and Active Directory. Container Cloud respects multi-tenancy policies and security permissions of underlying infrastructure when deploying child clusters. Container Cloud builds on industry-leading security features in Docker Enterprise, including FIPS 140-2 Validation and a DISA STIG, and built-in image scanning and signing in Docker Trusted Registry. | |
Platform Infrastructure | |
| The distributed multi-cluster management capabilities in Docker Enterprise Container Cloud enable robust edge computing support. With a centralized management plane and centralized observability, coupled with automated full-stack lifecycle management and continuous updates, organizations can ensure their entire fleet of Kubernetes clusters are always consistent, available, and up to date, from the data center to the edge. Based on the underlying infrastructure, Container Cloud automatically provisions container storage resources for each of its child clusters. Users don’t need to hassle with the complexity of attaching storage volumes to their VMs, leveraging a centralized Ceph cluster, or using mounted volumes on bare metal nodes. | |
Platform Experience | |
| Docker Enterprise Container Cloud and Lens provide a developer experience that’s unparalleled in its ease of use and efficiency. By using an intuitive GUI to create and update self-service Kubernetes clusters, developers can deploy, observe and manage their applications without getting slowed down by complex infrastructure. By simply importing their clusters’ kubeconfig files into Lens, developers can easily navigate Kubernetes primitives such as deployments, pods, and nodes, with complete situational awareness and control. With a single click. developers can inspect logs, modify YAML files, or open a terminal to use kubectl. Container Cloud, Docker Enterprise, and Lens also provide a consistent operator experience for platform operations across clouds, with automated full-stack lifecycle management and continuous updates, a centralized management plane, centralized observability, self-service clusters, and a secure software supply chain. With the intuitive GUI included in Container Cloud, operators can manage an entire fleet of Kubernetes clusters across public and private clouds, as well as bare metal. A centralized cloud-native LMA toolchain provides observability for each cluster, and aggregated data for the entire fleet. Mirantis is the only leading container platform vendor to offer real enterprise choice at every layer of the stack, from the infrastructure layer to the operating system to the cloud-native Kubernetes ecosystem. Enterprises no longer need to lock themselves into a single virtualization/cloud platform or operating system – with Mirantis they are free to choose the infrastructure and tools that best suit their needs. | |
Cloud-Native Application Development | |
| With robust open standards-based integration support for RBAC and IAM platforms, DevOps toolchains, Kubernetes-native tooling, and more, Container Cloud enables development environments that are fully integrated across the entire software development lifecycle. Every open standards-based Kubernetes cluster in its fleet can be managed by its intuitive GUI or rich Kubernetes and Cluster APIs, unlocking application and DevOps portability across clouds. Container Cloud also provides enterprise-grade SSO, AD/LDAP integration, RBAC, multitenancy, DevOps integration, and policy customization features that integrate with Docker Docker Enterprise, Docker Trusted Registry, and 3rd-party systems, to create a unified and secure software supply chain. | |
Container Runtime and Registries | |
| Docker Enterprise Container Cloud provides robust image and application lifecycle management features for comprehensive container image support. With Docker Trusted Registry, a private image registry with built-in image scanning and signing that’s included with Docker Enterprise, developers and operators can count on a secure software supply chain that integrates with their preferred CI/CD tooling. Container Cloud deploys Kubernetes clusters in HA configuration by default, so that applications can be updated or scaled without downtime. Using its intuitive GUI or through CI/CD automation leveraging the Kubernetes Cluster API, developers and operators can add or remove worker nodes to tune their clusters for application scaling and performance. |
