'Meta-container' startup C3DNA scores $2M to 'bring life' to Docker

The containerization of applications continues to roll along. A new startup called C3DNA, which provides “meta-container technologies” that it says help make Docker-ized applications more manageable, has announced $2 million in seed funding.

“We allow [applications] to be deployed and run and associated with their business needs,” CEO and co-founder Paul Camacho told VentureBeat. “We can change the way people distribute and run any application.”

Or as the company says on its website:

“C3DNA introduces the concept of a meta-container that abstracts applications from underlying infrastructure to remove dependencies on proprietary solutions, architectures and APIs. This coupled with C3DNA’s ‘Application Soft Switch’ technology enables instant mobility of applications running across Clouds in Virtual Machines, Containers (LXC, Docker) or Physical Servers.”

Docker’s containerization “is great,” Camacho said, “but it doesn’t provide the level of management” that businesses need.

“They package up the business code, and we’re bringing life to that code.” Camacho also said that his company’s technology can provide meta-containers for “existing legacy applications, proving the mobility to manage it anywhere.”

“Docker cannot do that, retrofit any application,” he said.

The 18-month-old company is the result of a five-year, self-funded, full-time R&D effort by co-founder and chief scientist Dr. Rao Mikkilineni, whose experience includes Bell Labs. The company said it will introduce its technology within the next few weeks.

The seed round was led by VKRM’s Kumar Malavalli, who was also the co-founder and ex-CTO of Brocade Communications.

“C3DNA’s new cognition-infused platform is a huge evolutionary step towards making both Docker and OpenStack applications intelligent in a way that’s never been seen before,” Malavilli said in a statement.

Camacho said the funding — the only money raised so far — will be used to launch the product, grow the engineering team, and develop partnerships. He didn’t identify specific partnerships yet, but he said possibilities include companies like Cisco and VMware.