Why should you care about a Service mesh?

Service meshes, like Istio, provide several features that developers would typically need to develop on their own, necessitating changes to their existing code. Without Istio, if developers require specific capabilities, such as secure communication between services coded in various programming languages like Java, Python, or Node.js, they would need to implement the necessary code, or libraries, for each language individually. This adds complexity to the code and can often lead to inefficient coding, causing performance issues with the application.

Adding security, like encryption, is just one example of what a developer may require to create an application. What about other features, like controlling data flow, testing how the application will react to failures, or how network delays may cause the application to behave in an unexpected way? These, and many other features, are all included with Istio – allowing developers to focus...