Logging, or log management, is "not necessarily perceived as the sexiest part of the market," concedes David Messina, Docker Inc.'s vice president of marketing.

But today's announcement about Docker Inc.'s partners in logging — tracking an application's health and behavior, and sometimes gleaning analytics from it — tells you a little about the mission the company has set for itself.

It's not only about making containers more practical for production deployments. Docker Inc. has another constituency to serve: software vendors.

"Part of being a platform, which is what we are, is that it's imperative for us to make sure our partner ecosystem is monetizing the opportunity," Messina says.

To that end, the company is anointing nine partners for the logging functions that go with Docker deployments. The designation means these companies' wares have proven to work well with a Docker environment, presumably giving them a leg up among customers shopping for log management.

One big name is represented — Amazon Web Services (AWS) with its CloudWatch service. Many of the others are startups — including logging specialists such as Graylog and Loggly. Yes, those are real companies. They're really into logging.

We're making fun here, but logging and analytics can combine to form the basis for a big company, even a public one. Just look at Splunk.

Today's announcement is the second related to Docker's Ecosystem Technology Partner program. The first, in June, was a set of monitoring partners.

You'll sense a trend. Logging and monitoring are less glamorous functions where data-center operators already have plenty of options. They aren't areas where Docker Inc. would seem likely to spend the $135 million raised in its last two funding rounds.

But logging and monitoring are necessary for what you might call grown-up Docker deployments — where the containers are used for production applications. Both functions also appeal to operations people who relish the control of, say, a VMware environment.

Docker containers were easy for developers to embrace. Moving containers to production requires getting operations people on board, too. So, it behooves Docker Inc. to pay attention to things like log management.