Highlights from DockerCon 2023: New Docker Local, Cloud, and AI/ML Innovations

DockerCon 2023 was held October 4-5 in Los Angeles, California, and was a hybrid event, with the first in-person attendance since 2019. The keynotes both days were packed with Docker announcements and demos, plus customers and partners joined us on stage. 

In this post, we round up highlights from DockerCon 2023. Event videos are available on-demand now on the DockerCon site and will be added to YouTube in the coming weeks.

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Docker CEO Scott Johnston kicked off DockerCon 2023, celebrating 10 years of Docker. 

“In the last 10 years, we’ve grown to more than 15 million developers, across the globe, and you all collectively — just on Docker Hub alone — have created and shared more than 15 million repos across open source, commercial, and many other communities,” he said. “Now, with your code, with your apps, with your Dockerfiles, your Docker Compose files, tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, and introducing your colleagues to Docker, you have made it clear that Docker is the way to build, share, and run any application, anywhere.” 

The first-day keynote included product announcements to accelerate the delivery of secure apps. 

“With these products, Docker is clearly making ‘shift-left’ the new standard in developer experience,” writes Zevi Reinitz for Livecycle. “Each of these new tools aims to achieve a singular goal for developers everywhere: combine the responsiveness and convenience of local development with the on-demand resources, connectedness, and collaboration possibilities of the cloud. This combination enables developers to do their best work much earlier in the SDLC than they ever imagined possible.”

The second-day keynote, hosted by Docker CTO Justin Cormack, focused on innovations in artificial intelligence (AI). 

“The critical importance of Docker to the modern development ecosystem cannot be overstated, and the new AI efforts could have a big impact on GenAI development efforts,” writes Sean Michael Kerner in VentureBeat.

Here’s a roundup of the news and announcement buzz at DockerCon:

Docker Desktop 4.24: Improving the developer experience

Prior to the event kickoff, Docker announced the release of Docker Desktop 4.24. This release brings the Docker Compose Watch GA release, a tool to improve the inner loop of application development. Docker Compose Watch enables devs to instantly see the impact of their code changes without manually triggering image builds. Read the Docker Compose Watch GA announcement to learn more. 

Docker Desktop 4.24 also includes the GA release of the Resource Saver performance enhancement feature. This new feature automatically detects when Docker Desktop is not running containers and reduces its memory footprint by 10x, freeing up valuable resources on developers’ machines for other tasks and minimizing the risk of lag when navigating across different applications. 

And with this latest Docker Desktop release, developers can view and manage Docker Engine state directly from the Docker Dashboard, minimizing clicks. Learn more in the Docker Desktop 4.24 announcement.

New local + cloud products

In the first-day keynote, we announced the Docker Scout GA release, next-generation Docker Build, and Docker Debug. The new products bring the power of the cloud to a development team’s “inner-loop” code-build-test-debug process.

The Docker Scout GA release enables developers to evaluate container images against a set of out-of-the-box policies. Scout’s new capabilities strengthen its position as integral to the software supply chain. Read the Docker Scout announcement to learn more. 

Development teams can waste as much as an hour per day per team member waiting for their image builds to finish. To address this, next-generation Docker Build speeds up builds by as much as 39 times by automatically taking advantage of large, on-demand cloud-based servers and team-wide build caching.

Developers can spend as much as 60% of their time debugging their applications. But much of that time is taken by sorting and configuring tools and set-up instead of debugging. Docker Debug provides a language-independent, integrated toolbox for debugging local and remote containerized apps — even when the container fails to launch — enabling developers to find and solve problems faster.

The Mutagen File Sync feature of Docker Desktop takes file sharing to new heights with up to a 16.5x improvement in performance. To give it a try and help influence the future of Docker, sign up for the Docker Desktop Preview Program.

Udemy + Docker

Docker and Udemy announced a partnership to offer developers accessible learning paths to further their Docker education. Read the announcement blog post to learn more.

AI/ML announcements

Docker AI

Docker AI, Docker’s first AI-powered product, boosts dev productivity by generating guidance for developers that follows best practices and aids selecting up-to-date, secure images for their applications. Read the press release and “Docker dives into AI to help developers build GenAI apps” on VentureBeat to learn more.

Docker AI is available to sign up for early access now.

New GenAI stack

Docker and partners Neo4j, LangChain, and Ollama launched a new GenAI Stack designed to enable developers to deploy a full GenAI stack in a few clicks. Read the blog post and press release to learn how the GenAI Stack simplifies AI/ML integration. 

The GenAI Stack is available in early access now and is accessible from the Docker Desktop Learning Center or on GitHub

OpenPubkey

During DockerCon, we announced our intention to use OpenPubkey, a project jointly developed by BastionZero and Docker and recently open-sourced and donated to The Linux Foundation. Read our blog post to learn about signing Docker Official Images using OpenPubkey.

Hackathon kicks off

A Docker AI/ML Hackathon kicked off the week of DockerCon. The Docker AI/ML Hackathon is open from October 3 – November 7, 2023. Winning projects receive prizes, including Docker swag and up to US$10,000.

Register for the Docker AI/ML Hackathon to participate and to be notified of event activities.

Videos now online

Thank you to the DockerCon attendees, speakers, and sponsors for making the 2023 hybrid event  a huge success! And thank you to Docker partners, customers, Docker Captains, and our community for helping make this year happen. 

Visit DockerCon.com for on-demand videos from the event, and subscribe to the Docker YouTube channel to be notified as videos are uploaded.

Learn more