How does the “software supply chain” — AKA the transiting code inside of containers — link the skills and knowledge gaps between developers and operations people?

“We really want to sort of start with the developer,” said Bradley Wong (pictured), director of product management at Docker Inc. The logic is that developers have the most arcane skills and usually the most innovative ideas, so their initial work should flow down to operations and others to implement, Wong stated during the Cisco DevNet Create event in San Francisco, California.

But what happens when the worker bees downstream cannot operationalize the applications developers create because they can’t understand the code or how to run it on the network?

Historically, developers and operations people have worked with quite different tools, but Docker, in its partnership with Cisco Systems Inc., wants to change that, Wong told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

“We’re not expecting ops folks to have to learn how to code, necessarily,” Wong said, adding that prerequisite skills to use the tools should decrease as they change hands from developers to operations and others in an organization.

Contiv 1.0, an open-source container networking fabric that Docker developed with Cisco, offers an easier way to make containers talk to the network, according to Wong.

Cisco can also provides plugins to the Docker Compose tool for defining and running applications, he added. They can say, “Well this web tier needs to talk to this application tier, and these are basic premises of what networking security tools can then plug into, then enforce policy,” Wong said.

These easy and explicit instructions give everyone in the chain a common language, he noted, adding that increased automation of these processes is a goal of Docker and Cisco’s strategic partnership.

Backflip to microservices?

Docker would also like to capitalize on Cisco’s deep enterprise connections and its Unified Computing System to bring more traditional, monolithic mission-critical enterprise apps into containers, Wong explained.

“We want to take those, together with partnerships like Cisco, and Dockerize those and eventually modernize them and evolve them into microservices,” he said. A tall order to be sure.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Cisco DevNet Create 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Cisco DevNet Create. Neither Cisco DevNet nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE