Supernova Award Category

The Problem

Swisscom saw Linux-based containers as an opportunity to provide significant benefits to major service providers. In order to take advantage of the trend towards the cloud and containerized microservices, Swisscom’s Application Cloud team launched an effort to make it easier than ever for businesses and consumers to build, run and use applications. The project included the use of Docker containers for its mission critical data services, but the team quickly realized they needed a solution for container data management.

The Solution

When Swisscom decided to transition to Docker for its mission critical data services it quickly became apparent that the team would also need a solution that enabled persistent data storage in containers, if the project was to be successful.  During the time of the initial project launch, Swisscom researched vendors that offered this type of solution and discovered that ClusterHQ’s Flocker was the  only product of its kind and they were the only company answering the need for a data management in Docker containers. 

The results

Swisscom initially investigated containers for the benefits they could provide but without a stateful container data management tool they would not be able to achieve these benefits. The implementation of ClusterHQ’s product Flocker Swisscom has provided dramatically higher density of applications per server to their major service providers. Which in turn delivers greater efficiency, decreased costs and higher flexibility for their customers. 

The benefits have only continued to grow. ClusterHQ and EMC’s software defined storage solution, ScaleIO, built the ScaleIO Flocker storage driver which allowed Swisscom to use their preferred storage backend more seamlessly with their Docker containers. 

Metrics

Without Flocker, Swisscom would not have been able to build and ship its Docker-based platform. This platform is key for Swisscom’s growing portfolio of business and consumer services. The operational efficiencies of a container-based platform are significant. Because of the radically higher density of containers per physical server provided by containers, Swisscom was able to achieve greater efficiency, decreased costs and greater flexibility.

The Technology

ClusterHQ’s open source software Flocker is a container data manager, which allows for frictionless portability of stateful containers. It enables containers and their data volumes to be moved as a single unit. Swisscom simply used the Flocker API to deploy containers across a cluster of hosts and attach an external data volume from an underlying software defined storage solution.

Disruptive Factor

Swisscom would not have been able to successfully implement its container initiative without a container data manager like Flocker, currently the only tool of its kind. While many enterprises are in the early research stage for containers, only a handful have deployed them in production. Of that handful, very few have deployed them at the level or scale of Swisscom. Swisscom views containers as the future for enterprise IT; the agility offered by containers changes the fundamental way that applications are built and deployed.

Shining Moment

ClusterHQ’s release of Flocker happened around the same time that Swisscom embarked on its container initiative. Containers are one of the hot technologies in enterprise IT today and it seems as if everyone is interested in dipping their toes in the Docker waters. Companies like ClusterHQ are making containers production ready and enterprises like Swisscom are the early adopters who will continue to reap the rewards of this initiative for their customers.