Host your own Screenful using Docker

Mar 5, 2016

We've jumped on the bandwagon too. 

Software-as-a-service is what the great majority of our users want, but we're getting a steady trickle of requests to run Screenful on customer premises, too. Some companies just prefer to keep their sensitive data behind a firewall and host their own tools.

Maintaining two versions of a product takes time and effort no matter how you do it. Many startups choose to focus only on SaaS. Having just spent the better part of two weeks putting together our self-hosted package, testing it, writing instructions and testing them, I can see the logic. 

But somehow it feels unfair to not serve people who just happen to work in an environment where using SaaS from a startup is not an option. I've been there myself. Why shouldn't they have access to our insightful analytics and beautiful dashboards? 

So until now our answer has been: Yes, but ... The setup has been rather complicated and time consuming, for both us and our customers.

It's safe to say that containerisation in general and Docker in particular are fundamentally changing how web apps are architected and operated. From our point of view the big thing is that Docker standardises the environment. No more worrying about operating system versions and missing dependencies. Deploying updates is trivial which will make life easier further down the road. The bottom line is that with Docker even a small SaaS startup like us can provide a sensible option for those folks that need to run the service on their own premises.  

Now our answer is just: Yes! Starting today we support Docker as the platform for Screenful enterprise installations. 

Let us know if you have questions or feedback by contacting hello@screenful.com. To stay on the loop, read our blog, or follow us on LinkedIn

This article was written by Tuomas Tammi

Tuomas is the CTO and co-founder of Screenful, the company that is reinventing how businesses measure their performance. Screenful develops dashboards that are both actionable and beautiful to look at. You can follow Screenful on Twitter.