The future of Linux Containers

Don't discount the technical innovation required to integrate existing technologies in a novel and useful way. Docker was an "off the shelf" experience unlike any other solution at the time. You could `docker run ...` and have the entire container environment delivered incrementally on demand with almost no setup required. It did have a social factor in that it was easy for people to publish their own images and share them. Docker Hub was provided as a completely free distribution service. The way they made distribution effortless was no doubt a major factor in why it took off. ▶ this video

It's amazing that Docker has not been cited in the comments so far. LXC, jails, zones, etc were around for some time. What changed things imo was the incredible simplicity of the Dockerfile and the tooling around it. Re-watch the first public demo: ▶ this video

Congratulations is well in order. It's so exciting to see the progress the team and platform have made in such a short amount of time. Only months ago at PyCon Solomon Hykes was showing off Docker to the public for the first time: ▶ this video

EDIT: I had previously asked what exactly Docker is. ▶ this video gives a super quick overview. Very interesting technology.