In our ongoing pursuit to be the one-stop-shop for the burgeoning software container space, we've compiled a new list of container-ecosystem vendors that you may not have heard of.

The container ecosystem has exploded over the past two years as companies look to take advantage of a market ripe for growth. A 451 Research report forecasts the container ecosystem to grow from $762 million in revenues last year to nearly $2.7 billion in 2020. Forrester Research estimates that 31 percent of all enterprise IT organizations have already deployed containers.

Last year we highlighted 11 container startups to keep an eye on. We added to that list late last year, with a handful of other container companies to watch in 2017.

Please understand that these lists do not include the largest players in the space that already garner all the headlines. This would include the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Red Hat, Docker Inc., Cisco, Dell EMC, Facebook, Huawei, and VMware.

Yes, those companies are exceedingly important to the evolving container ecosystem, and we do cover a lot of news from them, but we want to keep this listing to those that perhaps you are not as familiar with.

Feel you might have been left out? Let us know as we expect to continue updating this list.

Apcera provides what it calls an enterprise-grade container management platform. The company said the platform includes all the functions necessary for running containers, including orchestration, networking, and security.

One focus of Apcera is in allowing enterprises to support legacy applications while continuing to migrate new services to the cloud. This includes deploying Docker container management into production environments.

The company claims it can operate consistently in multiple clouds’ container environments – specifically Amazon EC2 Container service, Google Compute Engine, and Microsoft Azure.

Chef provides continuous automation software designed to help companies implement DevOps into their operating environment. The company’s focus includes its Habitat and Automate platforms.

Habitat was launched last year as a way for application developers to create their apps without having to make decisions about infrastructure early in the process. Habitat packages can run unmodified across a number of environments from bare metal, to VMs, to containers like Docker, grid systems like Mesosphere or Kubernetes, or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) systems like Pivotal CloudFoundry.

Automate is designed to provide a more consistent workflow for validating security requirements and compliance controls. The platform was updated earlier this year with increased integration into Habitat to extend functions for deploying and managing applications from legacy platforms to container-based, cloud-native microservices.

Datrium is a private cloud infrastructure vendor that provides converged storage and compute across primary application and data management workloads. The platform is delivered through an infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas) model.

The company recently added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers and kernel virtual machines (KVM) to its core software platform. The Datrium platform had initially focused on support for VMware servers and vSphere virtual machines. But it also launched storage support for stateful Linux containers and Docker persistent volumes on bare-metal or in virtualized deployments. Datrium late last year closed on $55 million in Series C funding, pushing its total capital investment haul to $110 million.

Puppet provides open source and commercial products designed to support the move toward DevOps, and it more recently launched platforms targeting container management and deployment.

The company’s Lumogon platform provides a “window” into each Docker image and running container and provides a way to collect, query, and report on container application metadata. The platform can provide records on all changes made through a container lifecycle without needing to install software into the container image or run a shell in a container namespace. It also provides a centralized query tool for multiple container deployments.

Puppet also recently unveiled its Cloud Discovery service, which it said brings situational awareness to cloud environments not managed by Puppet. The cloud-first, as-a-service platform allows for scanning and data collecting across public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments, which can allow for quicker action in terms of managing data models for companies relying on various cloud deployment methods.

RightScale’s Universal Cloud Management Platform is designed to allow IT departments to deliver self-service provisioning and control to cloud deployments. This includes control and management of cloud workloads from a single console, and the ability to track and adjust cloud usage to control costs.

The company also targets Docker container management initiatives through integration with existing tools to provide automated infrastructure

SUSE offers open source cloud infrastructure and storage for enterprises. The company launched in 1992 as an enterprise Linux distribution provider, and today offers OpenStack-based infrastructure-as-a-service cloud and container-as-a-service (Caas) platforms.

The Caas platform was unveiled last month with a focus on supporting enterprises either containerizing existing applications directly or those using a microservices architecture. The platform uses Kubernetes for orchestration, its own MicroOS operating system, and Salt as a basis for configuration.

SUSE last year gained some OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets, along with employees from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The deal, which closed in March, came at a time when SUSE’s parent company, Micro Focus, was in the process of merging with HPE’s Software division as part of an $8.8 billion deal.

Lacework is a cloud security provider that recently came out of incubation with its Polygraph platform. The company said the service detects breaches, manages insider threats, delivers insights into workloads, and offers graphical investigation tools for public, private, and hybrid cloud workloads.

The company said the platform is "fully container-aware," and takes baseline readings on container behaviors, tracks and monitors container provenance, automatically provides security for each container, and can run within a container.

The platform is available directly from Lacework on a self-service model, or via Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplace as a hourly subscription service. The company said it conducted early testing with Wavefront, Snowflake, Jitterbit, and Verizon.

Container and cloud security provider vArmour offers its Distributed Security System (DSS) to enterprises targeting software-based segmentation, microsegmentation, and application-aware monitoring in protecting applications and workloads.

The company said it has developed a method for consuming application context from container control planes and schedulers, such as Kubernetes and Mesos Marathon, and plugging them into flexible declarative policies. This allows users to predefine application and policies, and then dynamically plug in containers as they are instantiated.

VArmour also touts a recent patent for security policy generation using container metadata information.

The company said it has partnered with a number of large players in the space, including AWS, Cisco, HPE, and VMware. It has raised $83 million in funding since its formation in 2011.