For Liberty Mutual, the Openness and Flexibility of the Cloud Means Better Business Outcomes

We had the chance recently to sit down with the Liberty Mutual Insurance team at their Portsmouth, New Hampshire offices and talk about how they deliver better business outcomes with the cloud and containerization.

At this point, Liberty Mutual has moved about 30 percent of their applications to the cloud. One of big improvements the team has seen with the cloud and Docker is the speed at which developers can develop and deploy their applications. That means better business outcomes for Liberty Mutual and its customers.

Here’s what they told us. You can also catch the highlights in this two-minute video:

On how tech is central to Liberty Mutual’s business

Mark Cressey, SVP and GM, IT Hosting Services: Tech and the digitization it’s allowed has really enabled Liberty Mutual to get deeply ingrained in our customers’ lives and support them through their major life journeys. We’re able to be more predictive of what our customer’s needs and get in front of them as a proactive step. How can we help? How can we assist you? Is this the right coverage? And even to the point where using real time information, we can warn them about approaching windstorms or warn our Continue reading

Don’t Be Scared of Kubernetes

5 Reasons You Might Be Afraid to Get Started with Kubernetes

Kubernetes has the broadest capabilities of any container orchestrator available today, which adds up to a lot of power and complexity. That can be overwhelming for a lot of people jumping in for the first time – enough to scare people off from getting started. There are a few reasons it can seem intimidating:

• It’s complicated, isn’t it? As we noted in a previous post, jumping into the cockpit of a state-of-the-art jet puts a lot of power under you, but how to actually fly the thing is not obvious. If you’ve never done more than play a flight simulator game, it can be downright scary.
• Is it production-ready? Everyone is talking about Kubernetes, but it’s only emerged as a major technology in the past few years. Many companies take a wait-and-see approach on new technologies. Building out a Kubernetes deployment on your own means solving challenging problems without enterprise support. 
• Do I have the people and skills to support it? IT teams are just beginning to learn Kubernetes. If it’s complicated, it means you’ll need people with the right experience to support it. According to industry Continue reading

How Carnival Corporation Creates Customized Guest Experiences with Docker Enterprise

When you get on a cruise ship or go to a major resort, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes. Thousands of people work to create amazing, memorable experiences, often out of sight. And increasingly, technology helps them make those experiences even better.

We sat down recently with Todd Heard, VP of Infrastructure at Carnival Corporation, to find out how technology like Docker helps them create memorable experiences for their guests. Todd and some of his colleagues worked at Disney in the past, so they know a thing or two about memorable experiences.

Here’s what he told us. You can also catch the highlights in this 2 minute video:

On Carnival’s Mission

Our goal at Carnival Corporation is to provide a very personalized, seamless, and customized experience for each and every guest on their vacation. Our people and technology investments are what make that possible. But we also need to keep up with changes in the industry and people’s lifestyles.

On Technology in the Travel Industry and Customized Guest Experiences

One of the ironies in the travel industry is that everybody talks about technology, but the technology should be invisible Continue reading

How Wiley Education Services Empowers Students with Docker Enterprise

We sat down recently with our customer, Wiley Education Services, to find out how Docker Enterprise helps them connect with and empower higher education students. Wiley Education Services (WES) is a division of Wiley Publishing that delivers online services to over 60 higher education institutions.

We spoke with Blaine Helmick, Senior Manager of Systems Engineering about innovation and technology in education. Read on to learn more about Wiley, or watch the short video interview with Blaine:

On Wiley’s Mission…

Our mission at Wiley Education Services is empowering people, to connect people to their futures. We serve over 60 higher education partners around the world, and our role is to connect you to our higher education partners when you’re looking for a degree and you’re frankly looking to change your life. 

On the Innovation at a 200 Year Old Company… 

Wiley has been around for over 200 years. One of the really amazing things about being in an organization that’s been around that long is that you have to have a culture of innovation at your core.

Technology like Docker has really empowered our business because it allows us to innovate, and it allows us to experiment. That’s critical because Continue reading

How InterSystems Builds an Enterprise Database at Scale with Docker Enterprise

We sat down recently with InterSystems, our partner and customer, to talk about how they deliver an enterprise database at scale to their customers. InterSystems’s software powers mission-critical applications at hospitals, banks, government agencies and other organizations.

We spoke with Joe Carroll, Product Specialist, and Todd Winey, Director of Partner Programs at InterSystems about how containerization and Docker are helping transform their business.

Here’s what they told us. You can also catch the highlights in this 2 minute video:

On InterSystems and Enterprise Databases…

Joe Carroll: InterSystems is a 41 year old database and data platform company. We’ve been in data storage for a very long time and our customers tend to be traditional enterprises — healthcare, finance, shipping and logistics as well as government agencies. Anywhere that there’s mission critical data we tend to be around. Our customers have really important systems that impact people’s lives, and the mission critical nature of that data characterizes who our customers are and who we are.

On Digital Transformation in Established Industries…

Todd Winey: Many of those organizations and industries have been traditionally seen as laggards in terms of their technology adoption in the past, so the speed with which they’re moving Continue reading

Why you Have to Fail Fearlessly to Succeed: The Citizens Bank Story of Innovation with Docker

We had the chance recently to sit down with the Citizens Bank mortgage division and ask them how they’ve incorporated innovation into a regulated and traditional business that is still very much paper-based.

The most important lesson they’ve learned: you have to be willing to “fail fearlessly,” but to do that, you also have to minimize the consequences and cost of failure so you can constantly try new ideas. With Docker Enterprise, the team has been able to take ideas from concept to production in as little as a day.

Here’s what they told us. You can also catch the highlights in this 2 minute video:

On focus: 

Matt Rider, CIO Mortgage Division: Our focus is changing the mortgage technology experience at the front end with the borrower and on the back end for the loan officers and the processors. How do we bring those two together? How do we reduce the aggravation that comes with obtaining a mortgage?

On founding an “innovation team” . . .

Matt: When I came here I recognized that we were never going to achieve our vision if we kept doing things the same way. We wanted to reduce the aggravation that comes with obtaining a mortgage. Continue reading

3 Customer Perspectives on Using Docker Enterprise with Kubernetes

We’ve talked a lot about how Docker Enterprise supports and simplifies Kubernetes. But how are organizations actually running Kubernetes on Docker Enterprise? What have they learned from their experiences?

Here are three of their stories:

McKesson Corporation

When you visit the doctor’s office or hospital, there’s a very good chance McKesson’s solutions and systems are helping make quality healthcare possible. The company ranks number 6 in the Fortune 100 with $208 billion in revenue, and provides information systems, medical equipment and supplies to healthcare providers.

The technology team built the McKesson Kubernetes Platform (MKP) on Docker Enterprise to give its developers a consistent ecosystem to build, share and run software in a secure and resilient fashion. The multi-tenant, multi-cloud platform runs across Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and on-premise systems supporting several use cases:

• Monolithic applications. The team is containerizing an existing SAP e-commerce application that supports over 400,000 customers. The application platform needs to be scalable, support multi-tenancy and meet U.S. and Canadian compliance standards, including HIPAA, PCI and PIPEDA.
• Microservices. Pharmaceutical analytics teams are doing a POC of blockchain applications on the platform.
• CI/CD. Developer teams are containerizing the entire software pipeline based on Atlassian Bamboo.
• Batch Continue reading

5 Reasons to Containerize Production Windows Apps on Docker Enterprise

We started working with Microsoft five years ago to containerize Windows Server applications. Today, many of our enterprise customers run Windows containers in production. We’ve seen customers containerize everything from 15 year old Windows .NET 1.1 applications to new ASP.NET applications.

If you haven’t started containerizing Windows applications and running them in production, here are five great reasons to get started:

1. It’s time to retire Windows Server 2008

Extended Support ends in January 2020. Rewriting hundreds of legacy applications to run on Windows Server 2016 or 2019 is a ridiculously expensive and time-consuming headache, so you’ll need to find a better way — and that’s Docker Enterprise.

2. It’s much easier than you think to containerize legacy Windows apps

You can containerize legacy Windows applications with Docker Enterprise without needing to rewrite them. Once containerized, these applications are easier to modernize and extend with new services.

3. Both Swarm and Kubernetes will support Windows nodes

The recently announced Kubernetes 1.14 includes support for Windows nodes. With Docker Enterprise, you will soon be able to use either orchestrator to run Windows nodes.

4. Your Windows apps become fully portable to the cloud

Once you Continue reading

2019 Customer Innovation awards: 6 Stories of Transformation in the Enterprise

We are thrilled to honor six of our enterprise customers with the 2019 Docker Customer Innovation Award today at DockerCon. We launched the awards last year to recognize customers who stand out for how they are using  Docker Enterprise to drive transformation within IT and their business.

These are companies ranging from cruise lines to established “brick and mortar” enterprises, some of whom have been in business for well over 100 years. These are their stories.

Creating Exceptional Experiences: Carnival Corporation

Carnival’s first commitment is to creating fun, memorable and safe experiences for its guests. As the largest cruise line in the world, Carnival hosts over 12 million customers annually on 110 ships and at 15 resorts. Technology plays a key role in providing a world-class consistent customer experience.

Carnival leverages Docker Enterprise to build, run and update over 300 services on its new Medallion System, a necklace or wrist band IoT token unique to each passenger used to pay for drinks or as a key to your room. Adding or changes services, or testing new ones, is easy with the Docker Enterprise platform. The system is running on two ships today, with plans to expand Continue reading

Desigual Transforms the In-Store Customer Experience with Docker Enterprise

At DockerCon Barcelona, we awarded Desigual with the first ever Rising Star Docker Customer Innovation Award. The Desigual team earned the award by building a brand new in-store shopping assistant application in just 5 months thanks to Docker Enterprise. The digital shopping assistant is already deployed at over 100 stores, and is being rolled out to all of Desigual’s 500-plus clothing stores worldwide in the coming months.

In this 2 minute video, Desigual gives the highlights of their story:

https://youtu.be/BKbD-gW6yI0

The Desigual team analyzed existing sales data and found that of lost in-store sales, 60 percent were because a particular size was out of stock, and 40 percent were because a product wasn’t available in the catalog.

They wanted to create a customer-first shopping experience that would stand out among retail clothing brands and help store associates recommend alternatives to customers. To do that, they needed to tie multiple elements together: Store point-of-sale (POS), the online catalog, mobile capability, and personal attention through the shopper profile.

Mathias Kriegel, IT Ops Lead and Cloud Architect, and Joan Anton Sances, Software Architect, discussed the project and why they selected Docker Enterprise in their presentation at DockerCon Barcelona 2018.

Announcing the Docker Customer Innovation Awards

We are excited to announce the first annual Docker Customer Innovation Award winners at DockerCon Barcelona today! We launched the awards this year to recognize customers who stand out in their adoption of Docker Enterprise platform to drive transformation within IT and their business.

38 companies were nominated, all of whom have spoken publicly about their containerization initiatives recently, or plan to soon. From looking at so many excellent nominees, we realized there were really two different stories — so we created two award categories. In each category, we have a winner and three finalists.

Business Transformation

Customers in this category have developed company-wide initiatives aimed at transforming IT and their business in a significant way, with Docker Enterprise as a key part if it. They typically started their journey two or more years ago and have containerized multiple applications across the organization.

WINNER:

• Societe Generale transformed how the bank develops its software by building a container platform for migrating thousands of its applications to the cloud.

FINALISTS:

• Bosch built a global platform that enables developers to build and deliver new software solutions and updates at digital speed.

• Liberty Mutual consolidated infrastructure and VMs significantly, paving Continue reading

3 Customer Stories You Don’t Want to Miss at DockerCon Barcelona 2018

One of the great things about DockerCon is the opportunity to learn from your peers and find out what they’re doing. We’re pleased to announce several of the sessions in our Customer Stories track. In the track, you’ll hear from your peers who are using Docker Enterprise to modernize legacy applications, build new services and products, and transform the customer experience.

These are just a few of the sessions in the catalog today. You can browse the full list of sessions here. We also have a few more we’ll announce over the coming weeks (some customers just like to keep things under wraps for a little longer).

Desigual Transforms the In-Store Experience with Docker Enterprise Containers Across Hybrid Cloud

Mathias Kriegel, IT Ops Lead and Cloud Architect

Joan Anton Sances, Software Architect

We’re particularly excited to have a local company share their story at DockerCon. In this session, find out how Docker Enterprise has helped Desigual, a global $1 billion fashion retailer headquartered in Barcelona, transform the in-store customer experience with a new “shopping assistant” application.

Not Because We Can, But Because We Have To: Tele2 Containerized Journey to the Cloud
Dennis Ekkelenkamp, IT Infrastructure Manager
Gregory Bohncke, Technical Architect

How Continue reading

3 Ways Docker Customers Future-Proof Legacy Windows Server Applications

In 2018, why are we still talking about legacy Windows applications? Why are we holding onto Windows Servers that are a decade old? The simple answer — the applications on those servers still work, and they still serve a business purpose. But they can become a significant liability.

Many of our customers are containerizing legacy Windows 2003 and 2008 applications today with Docker Enterprise, making them portable to new Windows Server platforms and the cloud with no code changes. These three examples — Jabil Circuit, a bank, and GE Digital, showcase the depth of what you can do with Docker Enterprise to modernize legacy Windows applications.

Jabil Modernizes Legacy Windows Apps for Cloud Migration

Jabil, one of world’s most technologically advanced manufacturing solution providers with over 100 sites in 29 countries, has embarked on a digital journey to modernize their technology infrastructure. They have a “cloud-first” strategy that requires modernizing over 100 legacy .NET and Java applications, many of which are running on Windows 2008 and 2012.

They’ve deployed Docker Enterprise and windows containers to successfully migrate the applications from legacy Windows servers to Windows Server 2016 on Microsoft Azure cloud. Now that the first phase is complete, Jabil has Continue reading

How BCG Gamma is Transforming Analytics with Docker

Changing the culture and service offerings of a big consulting firm isn’t easy, but BCG has been on that path for the past five years. BCG has evolved from traditional consulting services into a digital transformation powerhouse with six divisions that deliver strategic and technical services to clients.

One of those divisions, BCG Gamma, is a global team of world-class data scientists who build data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence solutions for the firm’s clients. But building and shipping analytics, ML and AI applications to clients is challenging. Andrea Gallego, CTO of the division, is charged with creating an infrastructure that can support delivering high-quality ML and AI models at scale.

The Challenge: Shipping ML and AI Software to Clients at Scale

The big question on her mind was how BCG Gamma could not only build models, but deliver them to clients at the edge with real-time orchestration, monitoring and updates. GDPR and other regulations also meant she had to do this while ensuring integrity, consistency and lineage across data models.

Andrea and her team launched the BCG GammaX initiative, a core team of 30 engineers specializing in analytics software engineering, data engineering, UX design, distributed systems, and Continue reading

Disruption from Within: Driving Innovation at Franklin American with Docker EE

When you think of mortgage companies, you think of paperwork. You probably don’t think agile and responsive to customers. But Franklin American Mortgage wanted to disrupt that model. With their investments in innovation, microservices and Docker Enterprise Edition, they’ve been able to quickly create a platform to make technology core to their success.

Don Bauer, the DevOps lead at Franklin American is part of an innovation team the mortgage company had established last year to challenge the status quo. Franklin American was doing amazing things and transforming their business — all with Docker Enterprise Edition as the foundation.

Don presented at DockerCon 2018 along with Franklin American’s VP of Innovation, Sharon Frazier. They’ve been able to quickly build a DevOps culture around four pillars: Visibility, Simplification, Standardization and Experimentation. Experimentation is key. It lets them fail fast, and fearlessly.

In an interview at DockerCon, Don explained how they use Docker Enterprise Edition to drive innovation.

“Docker has allowed us to fail fearlessly. We can test new things easily and quickly and if they work, awesome. But if they don’t, we didn’t spend weeks or months on it.” – Don Bauer, DevOps Lead 

For the company, innovation is about Continue reading

Docker Enterprise Edition in Production: Stories from 9 Enterprise Organizations at DockerCon — Plus a Bonus!

One of the best things about conferences is meeting people and hearing their stories. I’ve been fortunate to work with several Docker customers this year on their DockerCon sessions. You’ll want to catch at least a few of these while you’re there next week. Make sure to add them to your schedule.

Here are the highlights from 9 amazing stories from Docker commercial customers that will be told at DockerCon, many from the world’s largest companies. There’s a bonus session, too!

Read on to learn more.

How Bosch built a “Container as a Service” platform. Till Schenk, IT Infrastructure Architect, will talk about building a centralized service based on Docker Enterprise Edition to serve a 62,000+ employee R&D organization. Hear about the architectural and operational decisions, the challenges Bosch faced, and how they’ve scaled up to 1,000 image repositories. 12:00 pm on Wednesday, June 13.

MetLife’s “ModSquad” talks about their production NoSQL DB on Docker. Jonell Taylor, a Platform Engineer on the MetLife internal innovation will explain the process they went through moving from traditional RDBMS to NoSQL on Docker Enterprise Edition. You’ll hear about the decisions they made impacting orchestration, availability, database replication, and disaster recovery. 1:50 pm on Continue reading