So this is something which I came across yesterday and was announced this morning – Istio.

https://developer.ibm.com/dwblog/2017/istio/

“Istio is an open platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. Istio’s control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes, Mesos, etc.” – (Istio on github)

So this new project from Google IBM and Lyft creating the ability to manage microservices across disparate data sources and clouds/networks.

There are multiple options when it comes to API architecture like capabilities for data management and reporting, but they are generally based on the premise that you are routing your traffic through the gateway before it goes to the end user. In that manner you can control, monitor and report on all the traffic from one place.

What Istio gives you the ability to do is to insert the tool and processes which you gain from an managed gateway but distribute it as a meshed network behind the microservice feed. So instead of feeding through one central point, you can distribute the gateway architecture at the source.

Istio was created to be cloud neutral and although it has the backing of IBM and Google there should be no reason why it cannot be used with services created in AWS or Azure.

For more information follow the new @istiomesh account on twitter.

I am really curious about this one and will be watching with great anticipation.