Rancher Labs scored an international deal to support NTT Group’s plans to provide container services to enterprise customers in Japan.

The agreement is touted as a collaboration between Rancher and NTT Group subsidiaries NTT Communications and NTTPC Communications. The NTT companies said they will provide the container services for the unified storage of data and objects.

Rancher is supplying its container management expertise and technical assistance. The company noted this was its first managed service provider licensing model to a cloud service provider in Japan.

The platform will provide enterprises with management through a Web-based user interface. Rancher said this will allow for the deployment of multiple Docker clusters; scaling and monitoring of containers and hosts; and configuration and deployment of infrastructure services.

A recent enterprise survey conducted by RightScale found 40 percent of respondents using Docker DevOps tools, with an additional 30 percent planning to use the platform.

NTT’s initial deployment will include a private container service on NTT Communication’s Enterprise Cloud, which is set for October. A public container service will follow on NTTPC’s WebArena cloud platform in December.

As for commercial availability, the companies said they expect container services for midsize and large enterprises to be delivered as a multitenant cloud service by year-end. NTT Communications and NTTPC are on the hook for providing service support.

NTT Communications and Rancher said they also plan to evaluate the service on an Internet of Things (IoT) platform of a “major manufacturer starting this month.”

Rancher, which was founded in 2014, is one of the smaller players in the container management space. The previously cited RightScale survey showed just 3 percent of enterprises using the company’s branded platform, though an additional 8 percent said they planned to use Rancher DevOps services.

Rancher did note that last year it doubled its workforce, surpassed revenue targets, and exceeded 19 million software downloads.

NTT earlier this year announced work with Dell EMC Japan and Virtustream to launch multitenant cloud platforms within large Japanese enterprises. The agreement combined NTT’s data centers and existing cloud platforms, Virtustream’s cloud platform for applications, and Dell EMC Japan’s storage and converged infrastructure platform.