With industry analysts declaring Windows Server with more than 60% of the x86 server market, and citing Microsoft Azure as the fastest-growing public cloud, it comes as no surprise that Microsoft, even at its current scale, is further extending its leadership as a strategic, trusted partner to enterprise IT.

It is this industry leadership that catalyzed our technical collaboration in the Docker open source project back in October 2014, to jointly bring the agility, portability, and security benefits of the Docker platform to Windows Server. After two years of joint engineering, we are excited to unveil a new, commercial partnership to extend these benefits for both Windows developers targeting Windows Server and enterprise IT professionals.

Specifically, the commercial partnership entails:

The Commercially Supported Docker Engine aka “CS Docker Engine” , Docker, Inc.’s tested, validated, and supported package of Docker Engine, will be available to Windows Server 2016 customers at no additional cost

, Docker, Inc.’s tested, validated, and supported package of Docker Engine, will be available to Windows Server 2016 customers at no additional cost Microsoft will provide Windows Server 2016 customers enterprise support for CS Docker Engine, backed by Docker, Inc

for CS Docker Engine, backed by Docker, Inc Docker and Microsoft will jointly promote Docker Datacenter to enable IT Pros to secure the Windows Server software supply chain and manage containerized Windows Server workloads, whether on-prem, in the cloud, or hybrid.

These fruits of this partnership for the first time offer enterprise IT professionals a single platform for both Windows and Linux applications on any infrastructure, whether bare metal, virtualized, or cloud.

CS Docker Engine and Docker Datacenter for Windows Server represent a major addition that complements several other joint initiatives as depicted above.

For developers, the integration of Visual Studio Tools for Docker and Docker for Windows provides complete desktop development environments for building Dockerized Windows apps;

and provides complete desktop development environments for building Dockerized Windows apps; To jumpstart app development, Microsoft has contributed Windows Server container base images and apps to Docker Hub ;

; For IT pros, Docker Datacenter will be designed to manage Windows Server environments in addition to the Linux environments Datacenter already manages.

Availability

Windows Server 2016 will be generally available in October, when Windows Server 2016 customers will be able to download the first version of the CS Docker Engine. Docker Datacenter for managing Windows Server containerized workloads will be available shortly thereafter. While the announcements today represent another significant milestone in our partnership, Docker and Microsoft are just getting started.

Check out the below to learn more!