Docker Acquires Kitematic Following SocketPlane Buyout

Docker didn’t stop buying following its acquisition of DevOps-defined networking company SocketPlane. The San Francisco-based company on Thursday announced its acquisition of Kitematic. It hopes the purchase will further assist Mac users with developing on its open platform for distributed applications. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed to the public.

“We are always focused on what’s best for the evolution of the Docker Project and its surrounding ecosystem,” said Justen Stepka, director of product management at Docker. “Kitematic aligns with our strategy to identify both teams and companies that have exhibited leadership in the ecosystem and are committed to expanding tooling for developers and sysadmins.”

The Canadian-based startup uses a graphical user interface (GUI)-driven workflow to automatically install Docker on a user’s Mac. This enables the developer to build, ship and run Docker Containers. Kitematic was founded in June 2014.

How Kitematic works is it leverages Docker Machine to configure a developer’s Mac as what’s called a “Docker host.” Afterward it installs and runs the Docker Engine. The developer is then presented with a catalog of curated content.

“We are always focused on what’s best for the evolution of the Docker Project and its surrounding ecosystem,” he said. “Kitematic aligns with our strategy to identify both teams and companies that have exhibited leadership in the ecosystem and are committed to expanding tooling for developers and sysadmins.”

The initial Kitematic feature set includes: one-click commands, advanced automation features, one-click installer for Docker on a Mac, intuitive GUI, ability to search and pull all public images in Ducker Hub.

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“Our goal is to make Docker as accessible to as many users as possible, and this is a significant step in that direction,” Stepka said. “Now, Docker can be leveraged in a simplified manner and we will continue to build out Kitematic’s functionality to extend beyond Mac. Kitematic will remain open source for users to take full advantage of what it has to offer.”

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