Containers

Containers provide a method to encapsulate code, binaries, libraries, and runtimes. They act as a form of virtualization for an operating system. Containers are run on container orchestrators that provide the scheduling and high availability benefits. The most commonly used containers and container orchestrators are built on open source software, more on this below. Or here is a link to the Wikipedia article that gives a larger overview.

Containers are one of the main drivers of modern software development and designing applications for clouds in general. However, containers become more important in a hybrid cloud or multicloud setting where consistency and repeatability are key.