Containers wrap a piece of software in a complete filesystem that contains everything needed to run. This guarantees that the software will always run the same with full isolation, regardless of its environment (e.g Developer Workstation, Test or Production servers), giving improved consistency in our application deployment and delivery. Container technologies are increasing being used to deliver services in the wider IT sector.

Our expectation is that using container technology will enable software developers more flexibility in application deployments, allowing increased pace of change.

In order to better understand benefits and challenges we may face with a wider container deployment we will deploy a prototype application using Docker containers. We will simulate the  application delivery and support life-cycle including patching and other support activity.