Container management platforms facilitate the organization and virtualization of software containers, which may also be referred to as operating-system-level virtualizations. Developers use containers to launch, test, and secure applications in resource-independent environments. Containers house components of applications, libraries, or groups of source code that can be executed on demand. The management platforms help users allocate resources to optimize efficiency and balance system workloads. Containers provide a flexible, portable platform to organize, automate, and distribute applications. Companies use container management software to streamline container delivery to avoid the complexities of interdependent system architectures. The tools are scalable and can greatly improve the performance of widely distributed applications.
Many container management solutions integrate with continuous integration software for accelerated deployment and integration. Many IT infrastructure solutions work atop and in unison with container management tools as well.
To qualify for inclusion in the Container Management category, a product must:
Organize containers and and launch container instances
Orchestrate and cluster container groupings
Automate or schedule container execution
Replicate containers for simultaneous execution
