Mark Davis is no stranger to the world of virtualization storage. From 2007 until 2013, Davis was CEO of storage virtualization vendor Virsto, which he sold to VMware. Now Davis is once again in the storage virtualization space, this time as CEO of Docker storage startup ClusterHQ.
In a video interview with eWEEK, Davis details how his experiences at Virsto were somewhat similar while also being very different from what is now happening at ClusterHQ. Virsto software built an optimized storage layer for virtualization that is now part of VMware’s vSAN (virtual storage area network) offerings.
The primary storage effort at ClusterHQ is the open-source Flocker project. Flocker is a container data volume manager for Docker containers.
“Doing the optimized storage layer for containers is very familiar territory for me,” Davis said. “I’ve been doing startups for quite a few years, and I can tell you that there is nothing like the Docker phenomenon; it’s going faster, it’s bigger and it has more momentum.”
Davis added that containers represent a revolutionary way of developing and deploying applications, which is what is driving the accelerated speed.
From a financial perspective, it’s early in the game for Docker and for ClusterHQ, but Davis is confident that there is a real business for containers.
“There is lots of money to be made. That’s, of course, why we’re in business,” he said. “We’re happy to be participants in open source. We have lots of people using our software for free, and we love that, but we’re here to build a long-term sustainable business, and we can’t do that if we don’t make money.”
Watch the full video with ClusterHQ CEO Mark Davis below:
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.