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>Does anyone have an insight into this? I don't have insight but I'm guessing the valuation comes from the prospects of enterprise sales.[1] Also, Docker (the

by jasode 9y ago

>Does anyone have an insight into this? I don't have insight but I'm guessing the valuation comes from the prospects of enterprise sales.[1] Also, Docker (the company) isn't staying still. We have to assume they will evolve to add future upmarket services on top of Docker that companies will pay for. Investors would see the PowerPoint slides for those future products but we as outsiders don't. Maybe an analogous situation would be the Red Hat multi-billion valuation even though Linux kernel itself is free and open source. [1] https://www.docker.com/pricing https://www.docker.com/pricing

programd 9y ago
Their enterprise pricing is per node. So if enough companies sign on to this, ever box/VM they put docker on brings Docker Inc. revenue. I'm sure at large scale this will be more of a flat rate negotiated deal ($XX,XXX per year) but still that's a lot of potential cash on the table. The risk of course is that the nobody will want to pay per-node and the community will just invest in the open source container ecosystem and replicate the Enterprise features with plugins and forks. Still, the market might be big enough that they can become another Red Hat just based on support and stewardship revenue.
- new299 9y ago
  Becoming another Redhat wouldn't be enough to justify investment at this valuation though would it? They need an upside potential 5 to 10x higher than Redhat's current valuation.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    Well, valuation is a gamble. You can try to justify the potential growth. The tech community is embracing the adoption and maturity of container-based CI/CD deployment. In the end, some number trick is done, higher valuation is posted, investors (new and old) are going nuts. Some months later, the big guy cash out large of the initial buying and move on to the hot baby in town.
- axus 9y ago
  VMware did pretty well, though!
  - ccmonnett 9y ago
    I think Docker would be quite happy being the 'next VMware', and as an ex-VMW person myself it's hard for me to fault that, too.
- bluGill 9y ago
  There are enough things I find as a company user annoying about docker to make me suspect some company will help fund the community fork. We are not quite there, but if docker keeps making changes that break us.

by jasode 9y ago

programd 9y ago

Their enterprise pricing is per node. So if enough companies sign on to this, ever box/VM they put docker on brings Docker Inc. revenue. I'm sure at large scale this will be more of a flat rate negotiated deal ($XX,XXX per year) but still that's a lot of potential cash on the table. The risk of course is that the nobody will want to pay per-node and the community will just invest in the open source container ecosystem and replicate the Enterprise features with plugins and forks. Still, the market might be big enough that they can become another Red Hat just based on support and stewardship revenue.

new299 9y ago
Becoming another Redhat wouldn't be enough to justify investment at this valuation though would it? They need an upside potential 5 to 10x higher than Redhat's current valuation.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Well, valuation is a gamble. You can try to justify the potential growth. The tech community is embracing the adoption and maturity of container-based CI/CD deployment. In the end, some number trick is done, higher valuation is posted, investors (new and old) are going nuts. Some months later, the big guy cash out large of the initial buying and move on to the hot baby in town.
axus 9y ago
VMware did pretty well, though!
- ccmonnett 9y ago
  I think Docker would be quite happy being the 'next VMware', and as an ex-VMW person myself it's hard for me to fault that, too.
bluGill 9y ago
There are enough things I find as a company user annoying about docker to make me suspect some company will help fund the community fork. We are not quite there, but if docker keeps making changes that break us.