ContainerX plans next week to announce the availability of its namesake product, designed to bring Windows and multi-tenant support to container management for enterprises and service providers.

ContainerX provides multi-tenant container management for Linux and Windows applications, running on bare metal and virtual machines, in public and private cloud environments.

Previous container management platforms support single-tenant deployments with Linux applications only, ContainerX CEO Kiram Kamity tells Light Reading. "Think of ContainerX as the second generation of container management," he says. Without ContainerX, enterprise IT shops with multiple projects and teams working on Docker applications need to set up multiple times. ContainerX can be set up once for multiple teams, permitting centralization of container management.

Windows support is also key. Enterprises are still running huge numbers of .Net applications, which can benefit from being containerized, Kamity says.

Heavy Reading analyst Sandra O'Boyle agrees. "It makes sense they support Windows and Linux and manage both. A lot of developers prefer Linux and open source, but there's lots of Windows developers out there as well, and applications based on Windows," she says.

ContainerX also benefits service providers looking to provide containers to customers. For example, Advantage24, a service provider with several data centers in Tokyo, is using the product to provide container-as-a-service (CaaS) to users in Japan, ContainerX says.

The software integrates with VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) vSphere, to make it easier for VMware admins to manage Docker containers.

Container management platforms like ContainerX fill a real need for enterprises and service providers, says O'Boyle. "There's plenty of room for startups to build on Docker momentum," she says. Developer teams need to be able to coordinate work on container applications, break down massive legacy monolithic applications to run as microservices, track containers and contents, troubleshoot problems and combine containers into pods, with networking, storage and policy. "Companies that have gotten into containers and microservices need these tools," O'Boyle says.

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The software will be available in a free version to start, with paid versions for higher-end installations and support. The minimum tier for a gold version for enterprises starts at $25,000 per year for 500 logical cores, with a platinum version for service providers supporting 1,000 logical cores at $70,000 per year.

ContainerX says it has about 60 enterprise customer engagements, with 25 installs.

ContainerX comprises a team from VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW), Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) and other enterprise vendors.

— Mitch Wagner, , Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud.