DOCKER CUSTOMER STORY
Docker Automates ITAM for Full Asset Visibility and Confident Compliance
5
minutes, down from 4 hours, to automate onboarding for new employees
98%+
asset data accuracy for SOC 2 audit, with full confidence they’ll pass
One
full-time IT employee saved due to automated integrations
The Challenges
The Docker IT team operates under the mission to provide helpful services, world-class expertise, and frictionless access to tools to enable productivity and help employees do the best work of their careers.
As their company grew, they realized that, unless they expanded headcount–which they did not have budget for–they’d have to make some changes to combat:
- Complicated spreadsheets that prevented strong inventory management
- Manual onboarding and offboarding processes that ate into their lean team’s bandwidth
- Limitations from existing tech tools and systems that didn’t support their full asset ecosystem
- Gaps in asset visibility that hindered security and compliance goals
Business Profile
INDUSTRY
Software
EMPLOYEES
500
ANNUAL REVENUE
$207 million
END POINTS
1000
WORK MODEL
100% remote
About Docker
Docker is the number one productivity platform for software developers. Actively used by millions around the world, they standardize lightweight developer environments that are portable, scalable, and improve the efficiency of developer workflows by eliminating specific dependencies on single machines.
With an annual revenue of $207M and a global remote workforce of over 500 employees, they provide unmatched simplicity, agility, and choice for both their external customers and internal teams.
Organizational Growth Revealed the Flaws of Manual, Spreadsheet-Based IT Asset Management
Docker’s IT team has managed to do what few teams have: maintain the same lean, productive group of professionals they first started with. However, as both their team and the company grew, problems surrounding inventory management and security concerns came to light that they couldn’t ignore.
Fragmented, Manual Asset Tracking
The team was using a complex Google spreadsheet to track IT hardware. Every time a machine was ordered or assigned, they would manually input the user’s name and address, the machine type, and the assignment date. As the sheet got more complicated, they attempted to color-code columns, add new tabs for lost machines, and toggle different labels to maintain asset accuracy. However, things got even more chaotic as their team grew. It seemed every time someone new joined, a new duplicate of the sheet would appear, making it nearly impossible to know which sheet contained what data—or keep track of that data at all.
Time-Consuming Onboarding and Offboarding
With over 500 employees across a global, remote workforce, the manual work that came with onboarding and offboarding team members was weighing down the IT team. Although they were always looking to automate processes, their HRIS doesn’t tie well into many apps.
As a result, each time someone joined or left Docker, the team would have to manually create tickets in Jira, create new accounts, deploy or retrieve computers, and update tracking numbers within their spreadsheets.
High Security and Compliance Risks
Because reconciling an asset to a user, as well as their number of assets, was so challenging due to their Google sheets, proving proper inventory management for compliance controls was becoming impossible as the company grew.
Their manual asset management processes bled into compliance concerns as the IT team spent hundreds of hours over a matter of months prepping for their security team and working to gather evidence that proved provenance over their IT hardware for SOC 2 audits.
Limited Lifecycle Visibility
Their existing processes and tool integrations (in some cases, a lack thereof) meant that Docker’s IT team couldn’t always manage a full range of machines or view their complete lifecycle. Employees also had the option to choose Windows or Mac products when joining the company. While the team uses Jamf to manage Mac devices, they couldn’t use the same tool to manage Windows devices, so their asset data remained separated into different tools.
Operational Strain on IT Teams
Although Jeffrey Strauss, Director of IT & Workplace Operations at Docker, feels proud of being on a team that is lean and high-performance without burning out, he recognized that it wouldn’t have been sustainable if they continued using manual processes with the same headcount.
These challenges made it clear that Docker didn’t just need better tracking—they needed an automation-first system of record that could scale without adding headcount.
“The only way that we, as a team, could amplify our impact and scale our operations without linearly growing headcount, was to look for a tool that supports integrations, automation, has APIs exposed, and is responsive to our support requests.”
Jeffrey Strauss
Director IT and Workplace Operations | Docker
Finding a Partner in Oomnitza
The Docker team knew they couldn’t achieve their mission, with their size, using Google Sheets and heavily manual efforts. Committed to finding a better solution, Jeffrey Strauss, Shawn Shakir, and Dan Schultz, Lead IAM Admin, put together a list of specific criteria that met their strategic and technical needs.
A Seamless Fit into Their Existing Ecosystem
One of the biggest reasons Docker chose Oomnitza was for the solution’s deep integrations with their existing tech stack. Via APIs, Docker was able to connect Oomnitza to their:
- Human Resources Information System, creating workflows that were not previously possible.
- MDM software, enabling greater security and compliance.
- Productivity tools, simplifying notifications to inform users of out-of-compliance devices.
- Jamf, allowing for the standardization of laptop monitoring and increased asset visibility.
The team could now easily build workflows that eliminated the need for manual efforts and reduced the chances of lost asset or user assignments.
Particularly when it came to their Jamf integration, Oomnitza could act as their cross-platform system of record and automation fabric across devices, identity, HR, ticketing, logistics, and compliance.
Searchability Across Systems
A far cry from sifting through complicated, chaotic spreadsheets, Docker could leverage Oomnitza to get a clear, accurate picture of their asset inventory. More than that, the team could filter out and pinpoint the exact data they were looking for.
Docker's criteria fulfilled by Oomnitza
- Deep, bi-directional integrations across HR, MDM, identity, and logistics
- Automation-first ITAM (not workflows bolted on later)
- Multi-operating system support for Mac and Windows
- Security and compliance readiness
- A responsive vendor partnership
- Proof of concept via sandbox and trial offerings
Automating Workflows and Integrating Systems for Lifecycle Visibility and Security Control
Upon implementing Oomnitza, the Docker IT team was immediately able to undertake larger projects that got rid of manual processes and deliver greater value to their business.
Automated Onboarding and Offboarding
Rather than keep sending out and retrieving laptops by hand, Fiona McShane set up a workflow that automated onboarding and offboarding.
Now, when someone joins Docker, Oomnitza also automatically triggers account creation in Okta and device deployment. The laptop shipping numbers are automatically updated in the correct asset fields, and the user is emailed with their tracking number and setup instructions for their Windows or Mac device. When a user leaves the company, Oomnitza automatically runs a script that flips the user to “deprovisioned”, detects the user’s device in Jamf or other systems, and locks it.
Those automations free up working hours and reduce compliance risks across lifecycle stages.
Zero-Touch Logistics Updates
The Docker IT team now gets all their asset and logistical data automatically updated via workflows or custom scripts within Oomnitza’s API. Instead of the team needing to manually input a Jira ticket when a laptop goes out to a new hire or comes in for a repair, those tickets are created through Oomnitza.
The data is updated from their logistics vendor, who is shipping the laptops, so they don’t need to manually change the assignee or mark the device’s location.
Clear Dashboards and Reporting
With a centralized source of asset truth within Oomnitza, Docker’s IT team can now create dashboards that display inventory counts and compliance controls. They can also pull reports that provide information for auditors and satisfy compliance requirements.
“We wouldn’t be able to stay the same size team if we didn’t have Oomnitza. We would probably need someone solely managing assets and shipping stuff out, so there’s a massive impact from [everything happening automatically].”
Fiona McShane
Senior Automation Engineer | Docker
Seeing the Impact
STRESS-FREE, SCALABLE OPERATIONS
Past processes meant the Docker IT team was bogged down with manual tasks that strained their resources and time. Since automating onboarding and offboarding workflows, they can scale with their business without increasing headcount or burning out.
TOTAL AUDIT READINESS
Under old spreadsheet-based processes, audit prep was a heavy, time-consuming process. Now, Docker has 98%+ reconciliation between MDMs and inventory assets. With all the heavy lifting happening automatically within Oomnitza, the team saves dozens of hours of audit prep time.
BONUS RESULT: REACHING TOWARD NEW GOALS
Before setting up Oomnitza dashboards, the team was constantly guessing their asset utilization rates. With those dashboards, they can confidently work toward a new goal of achieving 80% asset utilization, something Jeffrey claims they would “not be able to even start measuring in an attempt to achieve if it weren’t for Oomnitza.”
The Oomnitza + Jamf Integration
Docker uses multiple operating systems so that their employees can choose the device that best suits them, Mac or Windows. As a result, they couldn’t rely entirely on Jamf to control asset inventory and security, since the platform only manages Apple endpoints. This not only limited their visibility into the wider lifecycle, but it also increased security risks around devices in deprovisioning stages.
The Docker IT team leveraged Oomnitza as an automation hub to connect Jamf with other HR, logistics, and productivity tools—even systems most wouldn’t expect an ITAM tool to manage. Oomnitza has become their cross-platform system of record. In one case, the team even reverse-engineered their workflows to prevent assets from being deployed but not assigned.
