DCHQ

DCHQ, officially a developer of a deployment automation and governance platform for container-based applications, was founded by Amjad Afanah. Before its acquisition, DCHQ was also part of the 500 Global accelerator program. Afanah, who holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from MIT and an MBA from UCLA, brought over 16 years of experience in entrepreneurship and product management to the company, with previous leadership roles at major tech firms like VMware and Oracle. His expertise lies in cloud automation, containers, and cybersecurity.

The company developed a platform designed to help enterprises model, deploy, and manage the lifecycle of container-based applications. This addressed the growing need for IT modernization, enabling developers to containerize existing monolithic applications and automate the deployment of new microservices. The core of its business was to provide a robust solution for enterprise Docker management. This platform supported automated provisioning and scaling of Docker-enabled infrastructure across 18 different cloud and virtualization platforms, including prominent names like VMware vSphere, Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Microsoft Azure.

The service was built around an application composition framework that enhanced Docker Compose with advanced plug-ins for managing service discovery. This allowed for cross-image environment variable bindings and automatic container IP retrieval. A key feature was its service discovery mechanism, which automatically reconfigured load balancers and other application components during scaling events or container restarts. Beyond deployment, the platform offered monitoring, alerting, continuous delivery integrations with Jenkins, application backups, and in-browser terminal access for container management.

In July 2016, DCHQ was acquired by HyperGrid, a move that integrated its container management capabilities into a broader cloud service portfolio. Following the acquisition, Afanah transitioned to a VP of Product role at HyperGrid, where he led a team of 30 people. Keywords: DCHQ, HyperForm, Amjad Afanah, enterprise Docker management, container deployment automation, application lifecycle management, IT modernization, microservices architecture, cloud infrastructure provisioning, Docker Compose extension, service discovery automation, Jenkins integration, container monitoring, HyperGrid acquisition, 500 Global, container governance, multi-cloud management, virtualization platform automation, container orchestration, application composition framework