Do we need Kubernetes too?

Usually not. Docker is useful on its own, and plenty of production systems run containers on a managed service with no orchestration layer at all. Kubernetes earns its complexity at a scale most businesses take years to reach, if they ever do.

Can you containerize our existing application?

Generally yes, including older ones. We audit first to find where the application writes files, holds state, and depends on the host, then work through those before touching anything. Most surprises come from that layer rather than the code.

Does Docker work with our Windows stack?

Windows containers exist and work for .NET Framework applications that cannot move to Linux. They are heavier and less widely supported, so where an application can run on modern .NET we would usually suggest that route instead.

Is Docker Desktop licensing a problem?

It can be, since Docker Desktop requires a paid subscription for larger organisations. There are licence-free alternatives for local development, and none of it affects running containers on your servers. Worth checking before your team scales.

Docker
Development Services

Stateside Digitals provides Docker development services, packaging applications so they behave identically wherever they run and deployments stop being something the team schedules around Friday.

Docker packages an application together with everything it needs in order to run: the runtime, the libraries, the configuration, and the specific version of each. That package then behaves identically wherever it is started, which removes the entire category of problem where software works in one place and fails in another for reasons nobody can reproduce.

For a business, the value is predictability rather than speed. Deployments stop being events that might go wrong for environmental reasons. A new developer becomes useful in an afternoon instead of a week spent installing things. And rolling back a bad release becomes a matter of starting the previous package again rather than undoing changes by hand.

Same Everywhere

Laptop, Staging, Production

One package runs in every environment, so a problem found in testing is the same problem your users would have had in production.

New Starters Ship Faster

One Command To Get Running

Setting up a project stops being a day of following outdated instructions and becomes a single command that works first time.

Rollback In Seconds

Previous Image Still There

Going back to the last working version means starting an older package, not reversing a deployment while everyone watches.

Legacy App Packaging

Older applications with fragile dependencies wrapped up so they keep running on modern infrastructure without being rewritten first.

Multi-Service Applications

Systems made of several parts, each with its own requirements, running together locally and in production without any of them interfering with the others’ dependencies.

Onboarding And Testing

Disposable environments a developer or a test suite can create and discard, identical each time and gone when they are finished.

Packaging a simple application takes an afternoon. Packaging a real one takes considerably longer, and the reason is almost never the application code. It is everything around it: where uploaded files get written, how configuration and secrets reach the container, what happens to scheduled jobs, and which parts quietly depended on the server having something installed.

So we go looking for those dependencies rather than discovering them mid-deployment. Databases and file storage move out to somewhere durable. Configuration arrives from the environment instead of being baked into the image. Background jobs get containers of their own. None of it is difficult, but skipping that audit is how a routine migration becomes a bad weekend.

We containerize existing applications and set up the workflows around them: multi-stage builds that keep images small, Compose files that run the whole system locally, and registries with automated scanning for known vulnerabilities. Base images are chosen deliberately and kept patched, and we hand off cleanly to ECS, Kubernetes, or whichever runtime you deploy onto.

Docker
Dockerfile
Compose
Multi-Stage Builds
Registries
Vulnerability Scanning
Base Images
ECS
Kubernetes
Windows Containers
Docker Desktop
Rollbacks

Small Images By Default

No Secrets In Images

Non-Root Containers

Base Images Patched

Multi-stage builds keep the shipped image to what actually runs, which cuts both pull time and the amount of software that needs patching.

Credentials arrive from the environment at run time, never baked into a layer where they outlive the commit that removed them.

Containers run as an unprivileged user, so a compromised process does not start out holding root inside its own environment.

Base images are pinned, scanned and refreshed on a schedule, because an unpatched base quietly makes every image built on it vulnerable.

Small Images By Default

No Secrets In Images

Non-Root Containers

Base Images Patched

No, and anyone promising that is overselling. Containers add a negligible overhead and remove none of your application’s own bottlenecks. What they make faster is everything around the code: deployments, rollbacks, onboarding, and testing.

Docker
Development Services