In August 2017, Red Hat commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the current state and challenges of container usage and to assess what has changed since 2015. Our 2015 study revealed that firms were just figuring out how to adopt containers and understand their impact on operations. Over the last three years, container adoption has increased dramatically, as have enterprise skill levels and sophistication. A global IT delivery director at a consulting firm summarized his company’s approach: “Any app that can be containerized, should be containerized.”

Fifty percent of the IT and software development engineers we surveyed are using containers and advanced container management tools today. As adoption has increased, users are now actively adjusting their processes, supporting technologies, and skill sets. To explore further, Forrester conducted an online survey of 200 respondents and five telephone interviews with IT and development decision makers who have direct container experience.