Recently news broke out about Windows Server introducing support for Docker. This is significant because the ultra hot company had previously only been supported on Linux (and Azure). One of the major complaints about it was the lack of flexibility when it came to host operating system support. With this news Microsoft also announces that it will be contributing to Docker’s open source APIs. What a remarkable change from a company that epitomized closed systems.

I’m excited to announce today that Microsoft is partnering with Docker, Inc to enable great container-based development experiences on Linux, Windows Server and Microsoft Azure. Docker is an open platform that enables developers and administrators to build, ship, and run distributed applications. Consisting of Docker Engine, a lightweight runtime and packaging tool, and Docker Hub, a cloud service for sharing applications and automating workflows, Docker enables apps to be quickly assembled from components and eliminates the friction between development, QA, and production environments. Earlier this year, Microsoft released support for Docker containers with Linux on Azure.  This support integrates with the Azure VM agent extensibility model and Azure command-line tools, and makes it easy to deploy the latest and greatest Docker Engine in Azure VMs and then deploy Docker based images within them. – Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of the Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group.