The vendor community is coming up with more and more ways to monetize the popularity of containers. Some suppliers are offering complementary software, others provide professional services, and now Hewlett Packard Enterprise is adding pre-certified equipment to the list. The company is gearing up to start shipping servers with Docker Engine included out of the box.

The option will become available for all of HPE’s major server families, including its hugely popular ProLiant line, the high-density Apollo servers and the bare-bone Cloudline series. Customers also stand to gain the option of having Docker installed on the vendor’s blade systems and hyperconverged appliances, most notably its Synergy-branded machines. Each model in the latter line provides a centralized management API that makes it possible to quickly perform configuration changes when a new operational requirement arises.

The addition of container support comes as part of a new partnership between HPE and Docker Inc. that is set see the companies actively collaborate on go-to-market activities. In the first leg of the effort, they plan on delivering a collection of reference architectures aimed at easing the deployment of container-optimized gear. The designs will be complemented by professional services courtesy of Meg Whitman’s firm, which is offering to lend customers assistance with designing and installing their implementations. It’ll also be selling automation software to help ease ongoing management operations after the initial setup.

The most notable item on the  list is Docker Datacenter, the container specialist’s premium application platform, which combines of its disparate open-source tools into an integrated bundle. The backing of HPE’s massive sales force should help significantly increase demand for the offering and thereby provide a valuable new source of revenue for the startup. More such partnership announcements will likely to follow suite in the coming quarters as other data center suppliers like Dell Inc. also expand their support for containers.

Docker’s agreement with HPE provides a good idea of what to expect. On top of shipping the startup’s container engine with its servers, the company will also integrate the software into its expansive storage, networking and management automation portfolios. Docker Engine and Docker Data Center are even being made compatible with its OpenStack distribution.

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