Istio service mesh updated to Ambient Mesh

The Istio service mesh, used by many organizations in their efforts to go cloud-native, has entered its next iteration, called Ambient Mesh, which replaces the originals sidecar-centric architecture with a sidecar-less approach for improved security, according to TechCrunch. The solutions ongoing evolution, led jointly by Google and Solo.io, also focuses on easing user adoption by reducing the number of resources required to run it. It will enter general availability with the launch of Gloo Mesh 2.1. With the change, a platform owner can now install Ambient into a cluster while existing applications are running, and then instruct the system to integrate their desired application into the mesh, without the need for a restart or sidecar injection. Updates are also seamless and non-disruptive. Louis Ryan, Googles principal engineer, and Solo.io CEO and founder Idit Levine say Ambient Mesh will be offered as an optional feature but expressed confidence that it will see widespread use. We saw this operational friction that we wanted to help customers with. We also wanted to make sure that we didn't lose any of the security properties of the system when we did, Ryan said.