Early Draft: Service Mesh allows developers to focus on business logic while the crosscutting network data layer code is handled by the Service Mesh. This is a boon because this code can be tricky to implement and hard to test all of the edge cases. Service Mesh takes this a few steps further than AOP or Servlet Filters or custom language-specific frameworks because it works regardless of the underlying programming language being used which is great for polyglot development shops. Thus standardizing how these layers work, while allowing teams to pick the best tools or languages for the job at hand. Kubernetes and Istio Service Mesh automate best practices for DevSecOps needs like: failover, scale-out, scalability, health checks, circuit breakers, rate limiters, metrics, observability, avoiding cascading failure, disaster recovery, and traffic routing; supporting CI/CD and microservices architecture.
Istio’s ability to automate and maintaining zero trust networks is its most important feature. In the age of high-profile data breaches, security is paramount. Companies want to avoid major brand issues that impact the bottom line and shrink market capitalization in an instant. Istio allows a standard way to do mTLS and auto certificate rotation which helps prevent a breach and limits the blast radius if a breach occurs. Istio also takes the concern of mTLS from microservices deployments and makes it easy to use taking the burden off of application developers.