DEVOPSdigest

Solo.io launched Gloo Platform — a modular solution that combines API gateway, service mesh, security, and cloud-native networking technologies into a unified application networking platform.

Gloo Platform, powered by leading open source projects Istio, Envoy, and Cilium, delivers integrated API gateway, Kubernetes ingress, multi-cluster and multi-tenant service mesh, Kubernetes networking, security, and observability. The unified, integrated, and efficient Gloo Platform framework saves companies time, toil, and money — reducing costs of operations by as much as 30-40 percent.

“Many of today’s companies are waiting to take the next step in their cloud and microservices journey, but they are encountering major roadblocks. These organizations face managing the operational changes that microservices bring, juggling multiple platforms with different control planes, and struggling to integrate new innovations from the open source community without major disruption. Gloo Platform removes these barriers,” said Idit Levine, founder and CEO, Solo.io. “Hundreds of forward-looking companies worldwide already rely on Solo.io to adopt, manage, and use the latest open source, cloud-native application networking technologies such as Istio, Envoy, and Cilium. This latest Gloo Platform release will allow even more organizations to harness the power of these innovative technologies!”

Gloo Platform combines best-of-breed technologies (Gloo Gateway, Gloo Mesh, Gloo Network) with a unified architecture that boosts operational efficiencies and developer productivity. The platform is focused on four main use cases to help companies deploy, operate, and secure their cloud-native applications and APIs:

- Cloud: Gloo Platform enables the next steps in companies’ hybrid cloud and multi-cloud journey, allowing organizations to leverage the latest innovations from open source community projects (Istio, Envoy, Cilium, eBPF, GraphQL, WebAssembly) as well as technologies that run consistently and native on any cloud or Kubernetes environment.

- Zero Trust: Gloo Platform provides a zero-trust security model for both API and cloud-native application deployments.

- DevOps: Gloo Platform delivers DevOps agility through automation and GitOps, meaning that teams can securely deploy into any cloud environment while maintaining security and compliance for cloud-native applications.

- Cloud-Native App Dev: Gloo Platform accelerates cloud-native application deployments as well as application modernization, allowing teams to have self-service access to secure, scalable cloud environments and the ability to efficiently and effectively manage their applications and APIs.

Gloo Platform, which integrates cloud-native application networking technologies, delivers a highly automated, GitOps-driven architecture that reduces ongoing deployment costs and avoids costly misconfigurations and non-compliance events. The efficient API gateway and Kubernetes ingress architectures reduce the cost of infrastructure by 10-20x compared to previous technologies. Service mesh (with newly released Istio Ambient Mesh) can reduce microservices security costs and overall computing costs, while a unified control plane across Gloo Platform consolidates overall management of connectivity, security, and observability.

Gloo Platform features include:

- Unified control plane and API access, across all elements of the platform.

- Unified security model across Gateway, Mesh, and Network, enabling consistent authentication, authorization, and cryptographically-driven identity management of services.

- Kubernetes-native integration across all elements of the platform, for any distribution of Kubernetes (AWS EKS, Azure AKS, GCP GKE, Red Hat OpenShift, VMware Tanzu, SUSE Rancher, etc.).

- Extensibility of API Gateway and Kubernetes ingress functionality to include GraphQL and WebAssembly.

- Consistent multi-cluster and multi-cloud management across all elements of the platform; secure, multi-tenant isolation across all elements of the platform; and self-service API management to improve developer productivity.

Gloo Platform incorporates the following integrated components:

- Gloo Gateway delivers both north/south (API gateway) and east/west (Kubernetes ingress) functionality and is enabled by two popular open source projects, Envoy Proxy for the data plane and extensibility, as well as Istio for the control plane to manage multi-gateway deployments. It can be deployed as an integrated Gloo Platform or as a standalone API gateway. Gloo Gateway can be deployed in any cloud environment, any Kubernetes environments, or within a virtual machine.

- Gloo Mesh 2.1 provides service mesh management and service mesh functionality for Kubernetes clusters, VMs, and microservice applications. Gloo Mesh is enabled by Istio and is extended with a rich set of features to deliver tight security, high availability, and advanced routing.

- Gloo Network delivers Cilium CNI functionality for Istio and Kubernetes clusters and is enabled by the open source Cilium project, which is based on eBPF. Cilium is a rapidly growing open source project that provides enhanced networking performance, security, and granular observability for container-based applications.

Gloo Platform and its core components offer several market differentiators. Gloo Platform is the only integrated API-GW/ingress/service mesh based on Istio and Envoy, the leading control plane and data plane technologies in the industry. Gloo Gateway is the only API-GW/ Kubernetes ingress that can be deployed as standalone or fully integrated into the Gloo Mesh service mesh. Meanwhile, Gloo Mesh is the only service mesh that enables Istio Ambient Mesh, allowing Istio Service Mesh to be deployed with sidecars or without sidecars. Also, Gloo Network is the only Kubernetes CNI that is fully integrated into the service mesh and participates in multi-tenancy.

Gloo Platform allows customers to future-proof their cloud-native environments as they evolve their microservices and multi-cloud journey. Gloo Platform has a batteries-included-but-swappable architecture, meaning customers can begin their Gloo engagement with any of the products and can seamlessly add new elements over time.