Docker Buys Testing Tools Startup Koality

Docker, which automates application deployment on any in-house data center or cloud infrastructure using Docker containers, has acquired Koality, a small startup with a software testing platform that enforces continuous integration.

Koality has worked with Docker extensively in the past. Both the team and the product complement Docker. The acquisition furthers Docker's strategy to have a full suite that helps developers take an application from development to deployment in production and brings new talent on board.

The Koality team and technology will be integrated into the development efforts behind Docker Hub Enterprise, a product initiative that will allow enterprise IT teams working on distributed applications to collaborate on their modular components, while maintaining them in a private software repository behind their firewall.

Launched as an open source project less than two years ago, Docker the company brought its first production-ready commercial release only in June, but its influence on the data center is already palpable. CEO Ben Golub discussed the company’s impact with Data Center Knowledge recently. Docker raised a $40 million Series C in September to help it further develop its products and ecosystem.

Koality’s software is popular within the Docker community. It is used to significantly shrink continuous integration cycles. The technology provides users with an intuitive toolset that simplifies workflow complexity around managing software versioning, upgrading and updating.

“There's been an obvious synergy between Docker and Koality since our first meeting; it was clear how much we could accomplish together,” said Jonathan Chu, CEO and co-founder of Koality. “The entire team is looking forward to using our technology and expertise to help fuel the Docker movement – one that will shape the future of application development.”

The capabilities will allow Docker to form more services around its popular open source Docker containers and help the company monetize the technology. The company said that eliminating these convoluted workflows has spurred application innovation, even in highly regulated industries that require transparent processes to ensure that rigid security and compliance guidelines are met.

“As we surveyed our ecosystem to see how our technology partners were helping enterprises build distributed applications, Koality stood out in terms of its flexibility to integrate in with existing toolchains and processes while delivering practical, intuitive solutions around the application development lifecycle,” Golub said. “As an added bonus, the members of the Koality team came out of Palantir and also acquired a sensitivity for the issues facing some of the most security conscious organizations in the world.”

Docker Hub is the name of the centralized hub of centralized Docker resources. It has more than 40,000 community-contributed “Dockerized” applications available to those using the open platform. There has been a three-fold growth of content in Docker Hub over as many months, the company said.

Another recent bid to extend capabilities and talent came last July. Docker acquihired Orchard Labs, a two-man operation with an open source tool called Fig that performs container orchestration and a hosted Docker solution last July.