Containerization (container software)

What is containerization

Containerization is a "lightweight" form of virtualization at the operating system level that allows you to run an application and system libraries in an isolated area, a "container," each of which contains all the components necessary to launch the application, does not depend on the architecture of the server system and interacts with the OS using standard interfaces. In this, software containers are similar to transport containers - it doesn't matter what is "inside" the container, the main thing is that it has standard interfaces (in the real world - one of the standard sizes)^[1]

What's the difference between containers and virtual machines

Containers are "lighter" and compact than traditional virtual machines, they start very quickly, use a common operating system. They can be created much faster than virtual machine instances. Each container is essentially a separate microservice, its update does not require synchronization with other containers, and encapsulation in the container of everything necessary to launch the application facilitates portability from one environment to another.

Market estimates

2025: High cost is the main barrier to the penetration of container technologies in Russia. TA opinions

When evaluating the transition to containerization and Kubernetes, one of the key issues is the total cost of ownership. Despite the fact that Kubernetes itself is a product of Open Source, its efficient operation requires significant investment. The costs add up not only from obvious items, such as cloud capacity. TAdviser understood the matter in early October 2025.

According to TAdviser K2Teh Alexander Chubov, head of the Containerization practice, Kubernetes is a complex technology that requires deep knowledge in the field of containerization, orchestration, networks, data storage and security, so the cost of a qualified team is the first line).

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Фото: Freepik

The head of the Express 42 business unit of the Flant company Artyom Geniev agreed with this position and specified, that the labor costs consist of the preparation of the basic infrastructure for the implementation of the platform, deploying Kubernetes, configuring accesses and role models, integrating logging systems, monitoring and observability, high availability settings, networks, network traffic balancers, and data stores, policies for security, backup, as well as from the performance of acceptance tests and the creation of documentation for the platform.

Geniev believes that with a lack of competencies and, as a result, mistakes and alterations when creating a do-it-yourself "platform, labor costs at least double. In the first year of operation, the resources for solving the problems of maintaining such a platform in an up-to-date, safe state that meets the requirements for enterprise-class software can be 3-4 times more than the labor costs for its initial implementation.

When implementing Kubernetes, considerable costs are associated with computing resources. According to Alexander Chubov from K2Tekh, for the normal operation of the technology, the purchase of powerful iron or the lease of additional cloud capacities, as well as the organization of fault-tolerant and productive data storage, continues Chubov.

Although Kubernetes itself is free, companies are increasingly purchasing enterprise versions of solutions out of the box or services from cloud providers that do not require long-term refinement, include convenient management and security tools, as well as technical support, added a K2Tech representative.

Anton Zakharov, Deputy Technical Director of the Forward developer, shared his experience and said that the cost of ownership of the cluster on Kubernetes is formed at several levels: firstly, this is capital expenditures on infrastructure, since the cluster is demanding on resources and architecture. "Especially when it comes to production environments with multi-master configuration, fault-tolerant ETCD and comprehensive monitoring," he said. Secondly, the costs are related to the hiring of highly qualified engineers. Without an experienced team of DevOp and SRE specialists, the company risks being left alone with problems that have no easy solutions. And thirdly, the security aspect remains significant: by default, many settings in Kubernetes are disabled, and they must be correctly configured. This requires time and expertise, as well as the implementation of CI/CD, logging systems, backups and audits.

An additional cost factor is associated with the lack of uniform standards and the need for deep customization, says Arenadata One business development manager Dmitry Gayvoronsky. Each company has its own architecture and security requirements, so when implementing Kubernetes, you have to adapt the solution to the existing infrastructure and processes. This requires significant resources for refinement and integration, the specialist explained.

He also draws attention to the issues of information security. The ideal scenario when Kubernetes combines resources into a single pool and dynamically redistributes them is often unattainable in reality. In large organizations, information security services are not ready for this level of openness and flexibility, since this makes it difficult to control access. As a result, the platform is partially used, and its potential is not fully disclosed. This leads to the fact that the company incurs significant overheads, but the value from the implementation is lower than expected, explained Gayvoronsky,

As Vitaly Popov, director of the infrastructure project implementation department at Softline Solutions (Softline Group of Companies), noted, for large companies the transition to containers is really expensive, but it is necessary. For medium-sized businesses, a high entry threshold can be a serious obstacle, the interlocutor of TAdviser believes. According to him, containerization implies that existing customer applications will need to be adapted. Often these are monolithic systems that are not ready for containerization. In such cases, their significant refinement or even complete rewriting may be required, Popov said.

As Sergey Savchuk, chief architect of the information technology department of Cloud X, noted, if we talk about the introduction of "vanilla" Kubernetes (from the English vanilla Kubernetes - a pure version without modifications, distributed by the Kubernetes project itself), then installing it is not so difficult: all steps are described in detail in the official documentation. But since the "vanilla" Kubernetes is more of a constructor for building a platform than a full-fledged distribution kit, the company will have to solve additional tasks related to the selection and configuration of a network subsystem, the organization of persistent storage, security of the execution environment, monitoring installation, updates, etc. You may also need a dashboard with corporate single sign-on (SSO) technologies, Savchuk pointed out.

Executive Director of the "Laboratory Numerator" Vladimir Belyaevsky recommends buying a vendor solution. On the one hand, its cost will also not be low, on the other hand, the supplier will take on issues related to the development and customization of components, testing, safety and support. This allows companies to get results here and now, and specialists - to deal not with the operation of Kubernetes, but with the development of internal services and information systems, the expert explained.

According to Sergey Aksenov, director of software development at ALMIS Partner, today it is difficult to imagine the implementation of large-scale fault-tolerant services without the use of orchestrators. The transfer of long-standing monolithic solutions to microservices is not always justified, especially if these solutions do not need complex orchestration functions. However, for the design of new fault-tolerant Solutions SaaS, the cost of using orchestration systems is quite justified, he said.

As the leading engineer CorpSoft24 Mikhail Sergeyev noted, a fork of Kubernetes called Deckhouse is actively developing in Russia, which has certificates from the FSTEC of Russia, supports Russian operating systems and is included in the Register of Domestic Software. However, Kubernetes is more of a fashion trend, and many companies do not even understand why they need it, but they are implementing it in order to "stay in trend," the expert said in a conversation with TAdviser.

Linx Cloud product manager Stanislav Bratchikov is confident that Kubernetes in Russia will continue to develop, but its ecosystem will become more and more isolated. The popularity of managed services (KaaS) from local cloud providers will grow, since when switching to KaaS, part of the team costs will be reduced by transferring part of the responsibility to the provider, he predicts.

2024

The volume of the Russian software market for containerization grew by 66% over the year and reached 3 billion rubles

At the end of 2024, the costs on the Russian market software for containerization reached 3 billion. rubles For comparison, a year earlier, expenses were estimated at 1.8 billion rubles. Thus, an increase of 66% was recorded, as stated in the review iKS-Consulting published at the end of August 2025.

The sector demonstrates stable positive dynamics: for example, in 2021 its volume amounted to 1.4 billion rubles, and in 2022 - 1.6 billion rubles. At the same time, in the conditions of the formed geopolitical situation, Russian suppliers are actively strengthening their positions. If in 2021 their share was 32.8%, or 0.5 billion rubles, then in 2024 it reached 78.3%, or 2.4 billion rubles.

The study says that until 2021, the market for software solutions for containerization in Russia was relatively small and grew moderately with an average annual rate of no more than 13%. Most of the virtualization projects were classic hypervisors. The situation began to change by the beginning of 2022 against the background of legislative initiatives on the mandatory transfer of systems in the field of critical information infrastructure (CII) to domestic solutions. This process accelerated significantly after many foreign software developers left Russia. Organizations that had previously purchased foreign products were left without any support and the ability to transparently receive updates, which in turn caused the rapid moral obsolescence of legacy decisions and provoked serious risks to business.

As a result of active import substitution, which has become an urgent need for many industries, by 2024-2025 the containerization software market was structurally transformed under the influence of geopolitical factors and import substitution policies, as well as demand from business and government agencies, - notes iKS-Consulting.

In 2024, Flant became the largest domestic player in the software market for containerization, receiving 50% of the total revenue of Russian suppliers of such products, or about 1.2 billion rubles. In second place is "Basis," the result of which was 20%. Closes the top three "Laboratory Numerator" with a share of 9%. Next comes Orion soft with 8%. The total contribution of all other Russian developers is 13%.

According to iKS-Consulting analysts, in the future, the CAGR in the area under consideration will be 25.9%. In 2025, the volume of the industry is expected to reach 4 billion rubles, and by 2031 it will increase to 15.2 billion rubles. The main driver of the market will continue to be Russian solutions for containerization. At the same time, competition will increase, but consolidation will lead to the emergence of 3-4 dominant producers with wide ecosystems. Deliveries of software and hardware solutions by foreign developers, according to the authors of the report, will remain, but their share in the total market of the Russian Federation will be reduced to the minimum level.

The study also says that containerization will be in demand in telecom equipment, cars (autonomous systems), smart devices and other areas where rapid software updates on many nodes are needed. As hybrid clouds and distributed clusters evolve, more workloads will move from local servers to the cloud. The trend towards the integration of containers with serverless computing and hardware acceleration based on GPUs will increase: this model allows you to run machine learning and data processing loads without complex manual configuration.^[2]

Sales of solutions for containerization in Russia for the year increased by 81% and reached 4.31 billion rubles

At the end of 2024, the volume of the Russian market for solutions for containerization reached 4.31 billion rubles. For comparison, a year earlier, sales of such software were estimated at 2.38 billion rubles. Thus, an increase of about 81% was recorded, as stated in the Strategy Partners review, published on June 2, 2025.

Containerization is a method by which program code is packed into a single executable file along with libraries and dependencies to ensure that it runs correctly. Such files are called containers. The technology provides application stability, portability, and scalability while minimizing compatibility issues and simplifying the development process. Containers can significantly reduce deployment time, improve system reliability, and ensure the same application behavior across environments.

The industry under consideration demonstrates rapid development against the background of active import substitution. The study says that in 2021 the market volume was 1.81 billion rubles. At the same time, the solutions of domestic suppliers accounted for 27% of total sales, or 485 million rubles, while foreign players controlled 73% of the sector, or 1.33 billion rubles. In subsequent years, due to the emerging geopolitical situation, the share of Russian vendors began to increase rapidly: in 2022 it reached 55%, and in 2023 - 61%. In 2024, Russian suppliers received 70% of the total revenue, or 3.01 billion rubles. Foreign companies accounted for the remaining 30% - 1.3 billion rubles.

The study notes that the industry has a high growth potential, but the key condition for increasing the revenue of Russian vendors is to maintain the trend towards the transition of consumers in the state (B2G/B2G +) and corporate (B2B/Enterprise) segments from their own products (in-house) and open-source solutions to market platforms. Analysts emphasize that in the future, containerization will become the main technology used for microservices, and therefore the need for appropriate products will increase.

In 2023-2024, the segment of solutions for containerization grew rapidly. In 2025-2026, the high growth rate of the market will continue. In addition to vendors and integrators, there are many companies with in-house teams that actively use containerization for their needs, the Strategy Partners review said.

The key players in the market under consideration are named "Flant" (Deckhouse Kubernetes Platform), "Laboratory Numerator" ("Steering Wheel"), "Astra Group" ("Botsman Platform"), "Basis" (Basic Digital Energy), Orion soft (Nova), as well as Red Hat (OpenShift). Their total share at the end of 2024 was about 66%.

The authors of the study believe that in 2025-2026, interest in more resource-intensive in-house developments will decrease due to the expected cuts in budgets for the development of IT infrastructure among consumers. At the same time, as noted, the requirements of the Ministry of Digital Development in terms of the mandatory use of products included in the Register of Russian Software will be implemented instead of in-house development: this will further stimulate revenue growth of Russian market leaders.

Strategy Partners analysts believe that in the future, the CAGR in the sector under consideration will be 23%. Thus, by 2030, costs may increase to 14.58 billion rubles.^[3]

2019

The size of the global market for commercial container software will grow in 2018-2023. on average by 30% annually, exceeding $1.6 billion by the end of the period - this forecast is given in the Technology Multi-Tenant Server Software Market Tracker of IHS Markit analysts. Red Hat leads with 44% market share.

Gartner analysts also forecast strong revenue growth from global container management software and services, though more modest in estimates. They believe that the revenue of the corresponding market segment in 2020-2024. will grow from $465.8 million to $944 million.

The most popular containerization tools from cloud service providers, they, according to IHS Markit, use container technologies on more than a third of their servers. For comparison, telecommunications companies and the corporate sector use container software for about 8% of multi-tenant servers (that is, allocated for the service of users from different organizations).

This lag in deployment is due to the complexity of managing the container orchestration facilities. Enterprises and telecommunications companies need more advanced control automation tools to widely implement containerization.

Principal Actors

The sphere of containerization is developing rapidly, but two "de facto" standards have already appeared in it. It is a Docker container format and Kubernetes container orchestration software.

Docker is open source software for automating deployment and application management in containerization environments. It divides the OS core into containers that operate as separate processes. Initially, this product was developed by the company of the same name, which also has its own Docker Swarm orchestration platform. However, the latter is increasingly inferior to Kubernetes.

Kubernetes is open source software for automating deployment, scaling of containerized applications. As a set of services, it implements a container cluster and its orchestration. It was originally created by Google.

According to a study by StackRox, which studied the dynamics of container adoption in 2018-2020. Kubernetes dominates the market: 86% of respondents use it to orchestrate containers.

Container hacking

2024: There is a flurry of cyber attacks on container environments in the world. How they are hacked

There is a flurry of cyber attacks on container environments in the world. TAdviser was informed about how they were hacked at Kaspersky Lab in June 2024.

According to a study in June 2024, in 34% of cases, errors in configurations are the reasons for successful cyber attacks on container environments. In second place in terms of prevalence are shortcomings in the process of ensuring security in runtime, that is, when the program is already launched (32%). On the third - late detection of malware in containers (32%).

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Фото: Unsplash

Kaspersky Lab conducted a survey on various aspects of cybersecurity, including the protection of container environments, among large organizations with a distributed network of divisions around the world. According to the study, the majority (85%) of geographically distributed companies in the world that use container development methods have encountered cyber incidents over the past 12 months. More than a third of respondents noted that this led to the leakage of confidential data (39%), financial losses (38%) and a decrease in customer confidence (34%).

It is noted that the vast majority of organizations (94%) have their own IT development teams, while 79% of them use container development methods.

The results of the study once again emphasize that cyber incidents related to container development and Kubernetes pose a serious threat to business and how important it is to implement reliable security measures to protect against data breaches and other cyber threats in hybrid cloud and container environments, says Timofey Titkov, head of cloud and network security product development at Kaspersky Lab. - Taking into account the growing level of digitalization, it is important for organizations to be proactive and implement comprehensive security solutions in order to continuously reduce risks and maintain customer confidence.

Notes