A startup founded by Cisco and Red Hat veterans is looking to bring software defined networking (SDN) to the Docker ecosystem.
SocketPlane has developed a native networking stack for Docker software, which is a container technology for Linux that allows multiple applications to run on a single host.
The SocketPlane software, expected to be available in early 2015, will uses a ‘DevOps’ stragegy and network virtualisation tools to improve the scalability, performance and availability of networking in large, container-based cloud deployments, according to the firm.
Development operations or DevOps refers to the integration developers who build and test IT services and the teams that are responsible for deploying IT operations. The goal is to speed up development processes.
The SocketPlane team is comprised of industry veterans from Cisco, Red Hat, Dell and HP.
"Our approach to SDN is unique compared to most ‘SDN’ vendors," said SocketPlane’s VP Product Dave Tucker.
"Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we realised early on that there is value in our networking heritage and we are building our solution on top of these solid technologies."
CEO Madhu Venugopal led SDN and OpenDaylight initiatives at Cisco, while Brent Salisbury and Dave Tucker were both senior software engineers at Red Hat.
Venugopal said: "We see the incredible value in the use of Linux containers evidenced by the popularity of Docker.
"We want to enable the Docker revolution by bringing enterprise grade networking solutions to the ecosystem. This isn’t traditional SDN, we take a more pragmatic approach. SocketPlane will be native to Docker, developer friendly and familiar to network operators."
