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CoreOS takes Manhattan with Quay container-hosting gobble

Docker-friendly Linux to offer private repository storage

Cloud-friendly Linux vendor CoreOS has snapped up Docker container hosting startup Quay for an undisclosed sum, in a move designed to flesh out its offering for business customers.

"We are building out a set of products to offer a complete solution for users who are running their infrastructure in this new, container-y way," CoreOS founder and CEO Alex Polvi told The Reg in a phone briefing. "Quay, in joining us, is definitely part of that story."

Quay's core product is a hosting service for Docker repositories – that is, collections of Docker images, which are read-only templates of containerized applications that can be instantiated as Docker containers. In a sense, it's comparable to the service that GitHub provides for source code.

Hosting public Docker repositories at Quay.io costs nothing. But the company's business is built on secure, private repository hosting, for which it currently charges individuals $12 per month to host five private repositories and scales up its pricing from there.

Docker the company offers a similar service, in the form of the Docker Hub Registry. But running its own Registry is a good fit for CoreOS, because the company's unique, eponymous Linux distro was built from the ground up around the concept of containers. In fact, all applications run on CoreOS as Docker containers.

At the time of the acquisition, Quay also offered an on-premise version of its software for enterprises leery of storing their data in anyone's cloud. Polvi said that product will be renamed CoreOS Enterprise Registry and will be rolled into the Premium level of the CoreOS Managed Linux "OS-as-a-service" offering.

"Customers that are choosing our Managed Linux product are kind of going all-in on CoreOS, and this is another component that you get as part of that offering," Polvi told El Reg.

CoreOS's Quay gobble also sees the company expand to cover both coasts of the US. While maintaining its headquarters in San Francisco, CoreOS will open a second office in New York City, where Quay's New York–based staff will continue to operate.

That East Coast office needn't be very big, for now. Quay's workforce currently consists solely of its two principals, Jacob Moshenko and Joseph Schorr, who founded the company while working at Google's Big Apple offices. But Polvi said CoreOS is planning to staff up, and a New York expansion will give it the opportunity to recruit in both markets.

In addition, CoreOS has launched a promotion to celebrate the merger. Beginning on Wednesday, the first 1,000 customers who sign up for Quay's 20-private-repository plan – which normally costs $50 per month – will receive their first six months of service free of charge. ®

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