Despite their hefty technology budgets, large enterprise often struggle to adopt new solutions due to the time and effort involved in upgrading an organization worth of infrastructure. Docker Inc. is tackling the challenge today with a new program aimed at lowering the entry barrier to its container platform.

Announced at an event in Austin, the Modernize Traditional Applications Program aims to make it easier for firms to take the first step towards containerizing their workloads. As the name suggests, the initiative hopes to accomplish that by helping firms migrate legacy software to a container environment. It would theoretically be easier to start with new projects that can be built from the ground up to use the technology, but as Docker executive Scott Johnston explained in a blog post, existing workloads are usually a bigger priority for companies.

Under the MTA program, the provider offers to have its consultants repackage a designated pilot application into a container for a fixed fee. Not only all workloads are eligible due to technical constraints, but according to Docker, those that are are be moved in as little as a few weeks. Organizations can then assess how the migrated application performs to determine whether they wish to commit to a more wide-reaching upgrade.

Docker already has several case studies to show off. The company claims that financial giant The The Northern Trust Corp. saw a 200 percent improvement in hardware utilization after signing up for the program, while Microsoft Corp.’s operations team reduced infrastructure costs by a third.

The launch of Docker’s new program comes hot on the heels of the technology giant introducing a similar service aimed at lowering the entry barrier to its cloud platform. As part of the deal, Microsoft offers to help companies assess their infrastructure and calculate how much they could save by migrating applications to Azure.

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