Spoonium Promises Docker-like Container Virtualization for Windows

As containerized virtualization via Docker continues to gain steam within the Linux world, the same thing may be coming to Windows. That, at least, is the hope of a software company named Spoon, which has announced a new virtualization solution called Spoonium.

Spoonium's goal, like Docker's, is to allow users "to package applications and their dependencies into a lightweight, isolated virtual environment called a 'container.'" But what makes Spoonium different from Docker and other container-based virtualization platforms for Linux, such as Linux Containers (LXC), is that Spoonium works on Microsoft (MSFT) Windows. It does so by providing its own virtual machine, rather than relying on underlying components of the operating system, as most containerized virtualization solutions for Linux do.

Besides Windows compatibility, Spoon is eagerly promoting what it sees as additional advantages of its virtualization solution, including image layering, virtual app streaming via the network and close integration with the host networking infrastructure. These features and more, according to Spoon, make its platform more useful than Docker.

Whether organizations agree with that view, however, may prove less important for Spoon than the cloud server platforms they are already running. Chances are good that enterprises will choose to adopt whichever containerization solution is compatible with the operating system infrastructure they already have. Few are likely to switch to Windows just to run Spoon.

On the other hand, plenty of organizations are already running Windows in their data centers. For them, Spoon could prove an attractive solution for taking advantage of the kinds of functionality a platform such as Docker offers, without having to invest in Linux hosts.

And for the channel more broadly, Spoonium's launch is a reminder of just how much enthusiasm and momentum container-based virtualization has garnered in little more than a year. Just 12 months ago, Docker was still as much of a concept as it was production-ready reality. But now that Docker is ready for prime time, expect to see Spoon and other organizations working to address the limitations of Docker, of which lack of cross-platform support is only one.