On the heels of announcing the strategic alliance with Docker, today at DockerCon, Cisco announced that we are joining Docker in the Modernize Traditional Applications (MTA) program. MTA is a turnkey program consisting of products and consulting services from Docker and Cisco.

Most organizations strive to get the agility in developing and delivering business applications while increasing data-center efficiencies. Exactly the promises of cloud and containerization. However, according to IDC, only 3% of organizations have achieved optimized cloud deployments.

Till now, many cloud and container solutions focused exclusively on greenfield, cloud-native projects. IT organizations were left behind seeking solutions for their existing applications. Re-architecting everything is not an option as IT is already resource constrained. Designed for IT operations teams, the MTA Program modernizes traditional applications without the need to modify source code or re-architecting the application.

The MTA program accelerates application modernizations efforts for our joint customers and puts their container adoption in the fast lane.

Announcing General Availability of Contiv 1. 0 and Cisco Advanced Services Offers for Contiv

We got an overwhelming response when we announced the early availability of Contiv at Cisco live! EMEA, Berlin. Today, we are thrilled to announce the general availability of Contiv 1.0.

Since March, we worked with many early customers to make Contiv deployments more resilient, more scalable and more secure. In other words -it is production-grade. This GA release offers a rich set of capabilities to meet the needs of most demanding container networking requirements. Customers who are using previous 1.0 EA release, would be able to seamlessly upgrade to the GA version.

Over last two months, many of our customers asked, "how do I get started with Contiv as quickly as possible without waiting to build a new talent pipeline." They understood the "what" and "why" about Contiv but they were eager to take action and get started with the "how."

Today, to help our customers accelerate container adoption, we are announcing the expansion of Cisco Services to include Container Networking advise, implement and optimize services.

These services will help our customers bridge the skillset gap, avoid organization silos, as well as provide them with the best-practices that we have developed working with many other customers.

Available now, the Container Networking Services offers include:

1. Container Networking Strategy Workshop

This one-day, on-site workshop with Cisco or partner subject matter experts will help explore IT requirements for container networking, identify solution use cases to be deployed and a roadmap for completion. For example, Contiv supports multiple networking backends such as overlay, Layer 2, Layer 3 and Cisco ACI mode. This workshop will help identify which mode(s) works best for your workloads.

1. Container Networking Implementation Service

Deploys production-grade container network solutions across heterogeneous hybrid deployments -bare-metal, virtual machines, private or public clouds for our customers. This service also maps application security requirements to Contiv's network security policy model ensuring traffic isolation and application micro-segmentation.

3. AIM Optimization Service

This comprehensive service, offered as a subscription, optimizes your Contiv deployments for scale and performance. It provides networking automation with security considerations built from the ground up. The service also includes post-implementation optimization and on-site support option.

Today's announcements are the next big step to accelerate container adoption in organizations just like yours. We are excited to embark on the journey to modernize applications with you.

If you are at DockerCon, don't forget to visit Cisco booth G13 in the expo halls to learn more. Additionally, we are co-hosting with Docker, a hands-on workshop to get you started with Contiv. Register early for Docker Networking with Contiv as space is very limited.

Please follow @projectcontiv, @ciscocloud and @ciscodc to get the latest updates from DockerCon.

Enjoy your time at DockerCon, we look forward to engaging with you!

Learn More:

1. Docker press release on the MTA program
2. Read more about the MTA program from Docker
3. Getting started with Contiv has never been easier; start today using step-by-step tutorials.
4. Learn about validated container solutions for Cisco UCS and FlexPod