Docker has acquired early-stage networking startup Socketplane

Docker, the startup that has spearheaded a revolution in application development by popularizing container technology for packaging up application code, has added networking talent to its team by acquiring a months-old startup laser-focused on networking for containers, Socketplane, the company announced today in a blog post.

Socketplane came forth and talked about what it was doing just four months ago. Its team includes networking experts from Cisco and Red Hat.

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The deal is particularly interesting when you consider that Ben Golub, Docker’s chief executive, denied the acquisition Monday in a conversation with VentureBeat, calling it rumors and speculation. Guess not, Ben!

Well-funded Docker last year made a couple of acquisitions, but the market for containers — which can be thought of as an alternative to virtual machines, which have been around for more than a decade — has been heating up thanks to the rise of several container-oriented startups and product or partnership announcements from several enterprise software companies.

Another startup working in this domain is Weaveworks. Some have pointed to the shortcomings of Docker’s containers from a networking perspective, which is particularly true following the rise in recent years of software-defined networking and open-source systems such as Open vSwitch.

Socketplane started last year, with its head office in Palo Alto, California. Lightspeed Venture Partners backed the startup, which had fewer than 10 employees.