I've been on the road all month talking about business technology speed. The age of the customer is all about speed. Faster time to market, more frequent software releases, automated server deployments, instant cloud scaling…anything that removes friction from the app dev process is hot as we move into 2015.

Docker, the container management juggernaut, has generated some of the most breathless buzz in cloud-land this year. And for once, all the buzz is justified, for a few reasons. Docker's new, but containers are not. Docker makes containers easier to use, so more companies can get the benefits some of the big cloud providers already enjoy. Those include near-instantaneous app launch, rapid scale-out, and server efficiencies much better than traditional virtualization. 

Get all the details here. No important cloud vendor is sitting this one out, or waiting to see if Docker really has a future. Google, IBM, HP, Red Hat, VMware, CenturyLink, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft — to name a few — are all on board, along with most other Linux OS folks and, well, nearly everyone I'm advising who builds elastic systems of engagement in the cloud. VMware made Docker support a key message at VMworld, and Microsoft has just announced it will deliver new Docker-aligned container technology in a future release of Windows Server. That's big news.

Every business really is a software business now. It's time to check out Docker to see if it can help you get closer to continuous delivery. Read the brief to find out what Docker is, how it's used, who's using it, and how you can benefit from this promising new technology. And please reach out if you have a Docker success story to share — I'd love to hear it.