More than half (61%) of enterprise employees are currently using or experimenting with Container as a Service technology, according to the RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud report from Flexera, released on Wednesday. The report outlines the current state of cloud centers and services, naming the most popular container tools for organizations.

The report surveyed 786 employees to determine their organizations’ cloud usage. Businesses are using nearly five clouds on average, with the priority being the public cloud, the report found. Optimizing cloud costs is the biggest challenge and top priority for business in 2019, the report and our sister site ZDNet noted.

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Containers changed the way apps and services are deployed, as they are self-contained applications that IT teams can launch and update easily. Containers help fix the scalability issue that is accompanied by the thousands of virtual machines in the private and public cloud spheres. This tool is especially helpful in executing a multi-cloud approach in businesses.

Top 10 container software

Docker and Kubernetes are well-known for dominating the world of container tools, but there are other players in the game as well. The report identified the following 10 container tools as the most popular in 2019, as well as the percentage of respondents currently using the tech in their organization:

  1. Docker (57%)
  2. Kubernetes (48%)
  3. AWS ECS/EKS (44%)
  4. Azure Container Service (28%)
  5. Docker Enterprise (27%)
  6. RedHat openShift (24%)
  7. Docker Swarm (21%)
  8. Google Container Engine (GKE) (15%)
  9. Pivotal Cloud Foundry (13%)
  10. Mesosphere (10%)

Kubernetes is more popular among large businesses (60%) than SMBs (32%). Docker remains the most popular container tool among organizations of all sizes, however.

To learn more about how containers are used, check out this article from our sister site ZDNet.

The big takeaways for tech leaders:

  • The most popular container tools in 2019 are Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS ECS/EKS. — RightScale, 2019
  • Kubernetes is more popular among large organizations than SMBs. — RightScale, 2019

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This is your go-to resource for the latest news and tips on the following topics and more, XaaS, AWS, Microsoft Azure, DevOps, virtualization, the hybrid cloud, and cloud security. Delivered Mondays and Wednesdays