Designing secure, reliable and user-friendly networking APIs for containerized apps is one of the newest challenges in the software-defined networking (SDN) world—which is the reason Docker Inc., the company behind the open source containerized virtualization platform, acquired SocketPlane this week.

SocketPlane, which launched fewer than six months ago, focused on building networking solutions for Docker. Currently, the containerization platform lacks a complete set of networking APIs to allow containerized apps to make easy use of the host system’s network resources.

According to Docker, the engineering expertise it has gained from the acquisition of SocketPlane will help to change that. “The explicit focus of the SocketPlane team within Docker will be on collaborating with the partner community to complete a rich set of networking APIs that addresses the needs of application developers and network and system administrators alike,” Docker said in a statement.

Solomon Hykes, chief architect of the Docker Project and founder and CTO of Docker Inc., added, “Networking is a critical part of the stack for distributed applications and has become an increasing area of focus within the Docker partner ecosystem due to the rapid growth in multi-container, multi-host applications. To sustain the velocity of community advancements in open, modular and secure Docker networking, we felt we needed to support those efforts with a dedicated team.”

Companies with a stake in Docker’s networking solutions appear eager to see stronger SDN features for the platform. In an email to The VAR Guy, Adam Johnson, VP of business for Midokura, said the acquisition is “significant as it validates the need for overlay networking options within the popular Docker open source ecosystem, and now provides Docker with the right expertise to expand its own networking options, which will be hugely beneficial to the industry. Midokura continues to work closely with the Docker community, and we look forward to seeing the development of more robust, pluggable networking models so that production grade NVOs like MidoNet can solve the increasingly complex networking requirements found in containerized environments.”

Similarly, Bill Fine, vice president of Joyent, said, “Enhancing Docker’s open API for networking, in a manner that fosters a robust partner ecosystem, is necessary to facilitate broader and accelerated adoption of Docker. The acquisition of SocketPlane shows that the Docker team is serious about doing just that. We are delighted to see Docker add SocketPlane’s networking expertise to their team, and we believe that it will help accelerate a productive, community-wide collaboration on this important issue.”