Google, IBM and Lyft are joined to launch Istio — an open source project aimed at enhancing developments around microservices. The latest development provides a uniform way to developers to connect, secure, manage and monitor different microservices.
In the next-generation of cloud computing, microservices play a vital role. But the adoption of microservices is still not at par with other developments due to some initial challenges. Istio is thus designed to solve all those challenges at once.
“Google, IBM and Lyft joined forces to create Istio from a desire to provide a reliable substrate for microservice development and maintenance, based on our common experiences building and operating massive scale microservices for internal and enterprise customers,” the four companies write in a joint blog post.
Kubernetes support along with open source proxy integration
Google has been providing Kubernetes compatibility for the initial Istio version while the software is built using an Envoy proxy that cab aggregator Lyft designed originally for its production. The open source proxy notably helped the US company manage more than 100 services spanning 10,000 virtual machines and process two million requests per second for over a year.
Istio allows developers and DevOps professionals to transform their disparate microservices into an integrated service mesh by injecting a proxy into the network paths. Also, it helps to decouple operators from application feature development and release processes.
Availability on IBM Cloud
Whereas Google and Lyft are supporting its software side, IBM is enabling the deployments of Istio right on its cloud offering. The exclusive availability on IBM Cloud would give customers a reason to leave Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure if they want to experience the uniformity around microservices.
IBM believes that Istio offers CIOs a powerful tool to enforce security, policy and compliance requirements that arise across their enterprises. Operators can use a mutual TLS connection to authenticate and secure the communication between services. Also, the project can be deployed to enforce compliance rules, defining ACLs (access control lists) between services to allow conversations only between authorised services.
New release quarterly
Google, IBM and Lyft are all set to receive the user feedback from the Istio 0.1 version. Moreover, there are plans to bring major new releases every three months.
