Gartner Research

Answering the 10 Biggest Questions About Containers, Microservices and Docker

Published: 26 January 2017

Summary

There is a great deal of confusion about containers, how they should be used and how they may benefit an enterprise. This research provides I&O leaders with the most frequently asked questions and answers about containers, as well as microservices and Docker.

Included in Full Research

  • 1. What benefits can containers bring to I&O teams?
  • 2. What trade-offs should we be aware of when using containers?
  • 3. How should our team get started with containers?
  • 4. What are the ideal application use cases with containers; what are microservices, and where should they be used in the enterprise?
  • 5. Should we run containers on VMs or bare-metal servers?
  • 6. Besides Docker, what will we need for a successful container deployment?
  • 7. What are some of the trade-offs of using containers in on-premises environments versus in the public cloud IaaS?
  • 8. What is the enterprise adoption of containers, and how will they affect future infrastructure refresh/purchase decisions?
  • 9. Should we refactor an application to better support containers?
  • 10. What are considerations for an IT environment that is mostly Microsoft Windows-based?

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