Win the Agentic Era, Together: Introducing the Docker Navigator Partner Program

Over the past year, almost every conversation I’ve had with a partner has ended in the same place. Their customers are moving AI agents out of the lab and into production, and the moment they do, the question changes. It stops being “Can we build this?” and becomes “Can we trust it, secure it, and govern it?” The partners who can answer that second set of questions are the partners customers keep.

Today, we are launching the Docker Navigator Partner Program to help you become that partner. This post explains what we’ve built, why we built it around AI governance, and how you can get the most from it.

Why “Navigator”

AI adoption is not following a normal technology curve. Every team, every vendor, every model provider, and every hyperscaler is racing to ship agentic capability, and no single company sees the whole stack. Identity, observability, supply chain security, MCP gateways, models, and clouds are each building their piece. What enterprises are missing is a trusted, common layer that lets those pieces work together safely.

That’s Docker’s role. Docker is where agents, models, and tools actually run: vertically integrated where it matters, and horizontally open to everything our customers already use. We describe it as being the Trusted Navigator for the agentic era; the constant that helps customers make sense of a landscape moving faster than any one team can track.

Partners are how that promise reaches customers. Whether you build technology, run a cloud, deliver services, or sell through the channel, you extend our reach and turn the Docker platform into a complete, governable stack. So the program carries the same name, and its tiers describe the journey a partner takes with us.

Three tiers, one partner journey

Every partner in the Docker Navigator Partner Program is navigating the agentic era with Docker. The tiers mark how far along that journey you are, and the top tier carries the program’s name on purpose: it’s the title you earn when you have shown you can navigate it for customers.

• Crew is where every partnership starts: signed, onboarded, portal profile complete, first opportunities registered.
• Explorer partners are enabled and certified, actively selling and co-marketing AI governance solutions with us.
• Navigator partners are our most strategic: co-selling with Docker, embedded in joint account plans, co-authoring reference architectures, and leading customers through the agentic era alongside us. A Navigator is a partner Docker would put in front of its own customers.

If you’re already a Docker partner, you enter the new program at the tier that matches your status today. Nothing is taken away, and your tier is protected until 30 April 2027 while we work with you on the requirements.

What you get for navigating with us

We designed the benefits around one principle: the more you invest in building a governed AI practice on Docker, the more Docker invests in you. At the top tier, that means:

• a dedicated partner success manager and joint account planning with quarterly business reviews;
• deal registrations protection;
• priority access to betas and a dedicated product roadmap briefing each quarter;
• co-funded marketing (MDF), joint campaigns, and co-published customer stories;
• speaking slots at Docker events and a seat on our Partner Advisory Board.

The commercial model rewards what you bring:

• Partner-sourced, registered deals earn the highest discount at every tier.
• From launch until 31 January 2027, every approved AI Governance deal registration earns an additional 10 points on top of your tier discount through the AI Governance Growth Incentive, on deals that close by 30 April 2027.

If you’re working on an AI governance opportunity today, register it. Everything lives in one place: the new Docker Navigator Partner Portal, where you register deals, take the free Docker Partner Sales Certification, request MDF, download assets, and track your progress against your tier in real time.

The ecosystem is the product

No one wins the agentic era alone, and Docker has spent much of 2026 demonstrating our belief in a collaborative ecosystem and approach. For example, in September, Docker became a founding member of the Blueprint Alliance alongside Okta, AWS, CrowdStrike, Databricks, Google Cloud, Lovable, Proofpoint, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Wiz and Zscaler, with GE Appliances and World Central Kitchen serving as strategic advisors. Announced at Oktane in Las Vegas, the Alliance has agreed on a shared architecture for securing AI agents, built around four questions every enterprise is asking: Where are my agents? What can they do? What are they doing? How do I respond? Our part is the environment where agents execute: isolation, runtime governance, and a secure supply chain that extends trust beyond the model to the place the agent runs.

What our partners say

“In the agentic era, you can’t govern what you can’t see. Docker gives teams a secure, consistent runtime for AI agents, and Datadog gives them visibility into how those agents actually behave in production including the tool calls, the costs, the failure modes. Together, that’s a complete picture. The Docker Navigator Partner Program gives our joint partners a clear path to deliver it.“

Uday Tennety

Head of Technology Partnerships, Datadog

“AI agents are writing, containerizing, and shipping code faster than security teams can manually review. Snyk and Docker have spent years helping developers ship securely — and now we’re taking that further. Together, we’re giving teams the ability to run agents in isolated environments with security testing built in from the start, so every dependency, every generated artifact, and every tool an agent can reach is assessed before it ever touches production. The Docker Navigator Partner Program is how that gets to the broader ecosystem.“

Carey Stanton

SVP Business Development, Snyk

Watch: why Docker, and the market opportunity for partners (20 minutes)

Mat Velloso, our Chief Product Officer, and I recorded a 20-minute conversation for partners on why Docker sits where the agentic era is being decided, where the AI governance opportunity is opening up, and what it means for your business. It’s the fastest way to get your sales and technical teams on the same page. After you log in to the Docker Navigator Partner Portal, you can watch the recording here.

Three things to do this week

• Log in to the Docker Navigator Partner Portal (https://partner.docker.com/) and complete your company profile.
• Register the AI governance opportunities you’re already working on so they qualify for the incentive.
• Book a session with your Docker partner manager to agree to your account plan for the first half of 2027.

Not yet a partner? Start at https://www.docker.com/partners/register/.

This is a new program for Docker, and we’re humble enough to know we won’t have everything perfect on day one. We want your feedback and input. Tell us what’s missing. We’ll listen, we’ll be open with you, and we’ll invest in your success.

Let’s win the agentic era, together.