CIO OPINION
Australian adoption
In keeping with the reputation that Australian enterprises have earned as early adopters of new technology , technology leaders are already embracing service mesh technology .
service has a single role to play : one may perform user registration , another product lookups .
All of these services or components need to communicate with one another . They also need to be able to authenticate traffic flowing between them to make sure a service is who it says it is , as well as to control what kind of API calls might be made between the services .
A service mesh complements an API gateway in providing reliable , secure and observable connectivity between microservices in distributed , cloud-native environments .
Using a service mesh encourages a consistent approach to Zero Trust security between microservices ; to the operationalization of visibility and control of services regardless of where they are running ; to the meeting of security and compliance policies ; and for supporting performance of all of these microservices at scale .
By letting a service mesh take care of these concerns , development teams can focus their time and effort on building microservices and APIs that add features and functionality to their core product , and that fuel innovation and value generation for the business .
In keeping with the reputation that Australian enterprises have earned as early adopters of new technology , technology leaders are already embracing service mesh technology .
A recent study by Kong shows that 32 % of Australian organizations have a service mesh in production , while a further 44 % say they are in the midst of a deployment and an 20 % say they intend to start deploying one within the next 12 months . This is strong backing for service meshes as a concept : only 4 % of Australian firms don ’ t expect to be going down this path by mid-2023 .
The same study shows that three-quarters of service meshes connect less than 100 services at present , suggesting that usage is still relatively nascent , in line with the relative newness of the technology .
The biggest drivers for Australian organizations to deploy a service mesh are to reduce costs ( 56 %), followed by chasing service connectivity / service discovery / traffic reliability improvements ( 54 %), zero-trust security of services ( 50 %) and for compliance purposes ( 46 %).
Due to converging technology trends , such as the mainstreaming of public cloud and the need for omnichannel experiences , business leaders must find new ways to connect increasingly distributed infrastructure and devices .
APIs and microservices are the key innovation enablers here , but they need to be appropriately supported by service meshes and API gateways . Doing so affords API – and microservices-driven applications , and the Digital Transformation initiatives they are being built under , the greatest chance of success . p
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