The recent news that Docker Inc. CEO Rob Bearden circulated a company-wide email stating that the company has been engaged with investors in order to secure funding highlights just how successful the company has been, according to 451 Research Analyst Jay Lyman.

“In a sense, Docker is almost a victim of its own success,” Lyman said. “It democratized containers and made them easier to use.”

Docker Inc. was indeed foundational in the development of the current container ecosystem. The firm’s container platform, which is known as simply Docker, remains the basis for many container deployments today.

However, the company has struggled to make a business model out of that foundation.

“The challenge is really to make containers easy enough for enterprises to use and want to use, but it also has to require some level of support for enterprise users in order to support a business,” Lyman explained.

Docker Inc. did appear to have an edge in that support angle with its homegrown Swarm container orchestration platform that at one point dominated the space. And that early success nearly paid off as Microsoft was reportedly looking to buy Docker Inc. for a substantial $4 billion. Others were also reportedly interested in a purchase, including Red Hat and VMware.

Docker Inc.’s more recent money-making efforts have been focused on its EE framework. That framework was launched in early 2017 as a company-supported platform targeted at organizations looking to offer container-based applications. A Cowen and Company report from last year stated that the Docker EE platform has attracted more than 500 paying customers.

But that market position has since dwindled under the growing presence of Kubernetes. Docker Inc. has tried to stem that decline by more tightly integrating Kubernetes into the EE platform, but its apparent financial struggles indicate that the efforts are not enough.

Lyman noted that Docker Inc. moved with the market to Kubernetes, but at the same time left the opportunity to charge for support services. “Swarm had the potential for that,” he said, adding that Docker Inc. is also somewhat hindered because it “does not stand out as a Kubernetes company.”

And standing out is becoming increasingly important and difficult. Scott Sinclair, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, noted that "it has been astounding how quickly Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for containerized application environments. The major public cloud vendors, the major hypervisor vendors, as well as the top traditional IT infrastructure vendors have all made Kubernetes a priority.”

Docker Inc.'s struggles are also compounded by its recent string of leadership changes. Bearden took over leadership of the company in May, and was its fourth CEO since 2017. “It prompts questions,” Lyman said of Docker Inc.’s revolving executive door.

Docker Inc. is not the only once-established firm that has had its business model altered by Kubernetes’ dominance.

Mesosphere recently changed its name to D2IQ. That move came under the auspice of changing its focus from helping companies set up their cloud-native infrastructure to “day two” (D2) challenges of running that infrastructure in a production environment (IQ).

Lyman said that these are sound moves, noting that Kubernetes is still just a framework “full of complex and enterprise gaps.” He explained that the most prominent of those gaps include troubleshooting, monitoring, and security: all things that are day two issues.

That complexity could also provide a training avenue that vendors can leverage. Another area where Docker and other vendors can leverage Kubernetes is in training. “There is an ongoig dearth of Kubernetes talent that has not gone away and is probably even greater today than ever,” Lyman said.

While it might not make sense for Docker Inc. to do something as drastic as change its name like rival Mesosphere recently did, Lyman did note that it’s important for Docker Inc. to quickly find a sustainable place in the market, whether that’s with easing management or in training.

“Their challenge is to communicate that they are part of the Kubernetes space and not competing against the market,” Lyman said.