What does the container virtualization market need to take off? Deployment, management and orchestration tools, according to StackEngine, a new company that announced seed funding for its Docker automation solution.

Container virtualization via Docker, as well as upstart competitors such as Flockport and Spoonium, is enjoying explosive growth. But good tools for automating container app deployment and management don’t yet exist, according to StackEngine, which says it has a solution to fill that gap.

“We deeply believe that automation is the answer to an emergent problem in Docker and container technologies,” said StackEngine CEO and co-founder Bob Quillin. “We also believe a new and radically different approach is needed. Containerization instantly shifts the problem up the stack. StackEngine bridges that gap and gives enterprises the ability to deliver product faster, deploy more frequently, operate more reliably and run wherever is most optimal.”

StackEngine remains in private alpha and has yet to unveil publicly the automation tools that it thinks will become a crucial part of the adoption of Docker and possibly other containerized virtualization platforms. But the company, whose co-founders Quillin and Eric Anderson have backgrounds at CopperEgg, Hyper9 and VMware, has already received backing in the form of $1 million seed funding from Silverton Partners and LiveOak Venture Partners.

And although the channel will have to wait to see what exactly StackEngine will deliver, the message the company is already sending is that Docker and similar projects are not going to build an entirely new software ecosystem on their own. Partners and VARs are emerging as an important part of the picture to make containerized apps a viable solution for production cloud and virtualized environments, and right now, that new niche has plenty of space waiting to be filled.