Container applications are software modules with a precisely defined functionality that allow new deployment options delivering numerous benefits for automation technology. Benefits are the low-resource, universal application running on different computer platforms or the practical isolation, encapsulation and portability of software. What makes this approach so special is that containers operate like a kind of virtual machine that contains all the required components. This means that they can run independently of any external components and the existing environment. If several container applications are used on one hardware platform, they share the operating system and, if necessary, certain hardware resources, while being completely separate from each other and from the system as such. This ensures that a container application always behaves identically, regardless of the environment in which it is executed.