Guest: Erik Frieberg (LinkedIn)
Company: Tetrate (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk @ KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU

Security has come a long way from focusing on the perimeter and taking a wait-and-see approach. As companies start to move towards microservices, Zero Trust becomes a key consideration yet it does not come without its challenges. Tetrate is one company helping enterprises navigate these challenges with their service mesh products. 

In this episode of TFiR: Let’s Talk, Swapnil Bhartiya sits down with Erik Frieberg, COO at Tetrate while at KubeCon EU in Amsterdam, to discuss the state of adoption of Kubernetes and the key trends he is seeing in service mesh. He talks about Tetrate’s products and how they are helping customers implement zero-trust environments.

Key highlights from this video interview are:

• Frieberg talks about this year’s KubeCon telling us that people are falling into two different categories — the veterans who are well along in their Kubernetes journey who are coming to Tetrate with advanced questions about service meshes and API Gateways, and the other group – those just getting started. 
• Although many companies are on their Kubernetes journey, a significantly lower number have a large number of clusters in production. Frieberg talks about the maturity of the market and what proportion of companies are reaching the stage where they are working with real-scale environments and adopting technologies like Istio and products like Tetrate service spreads.
• Frieberg discusses the key trends he is seeing in service mesh: many companies are very familiar with an API Gateway and as they are evolving they are starting to move more to microservices. He explains how this increases the complexity and how traffic management, security, and observability become more of a focus. 
• Tetrate up until recently had two products in the marketplace — Tetrate Istio Distribution, which targets entry-level users, and Tetrate Service Bridge which services high-end, complex environments. Frieberg talks about their latest addition, Tetrate Service Express, and how it targets the mid-market, discussing its key features. 
• Security is a core issue for many customers as they move away from a perimeter defense mindset towards zero trust. Frieberg explains that Tetrate is working with customers to help them implement zero-trust environments, and how they are working with the SP announcements to improve zero-trust architecture within these applications.
• mTLS is the number one feature people want out of Istio, followed by authentication and authorization, and role-based access, according to surveys. Frieberg talks about the discussions companies are having around these considerations as they move toward zero trust. 
• Frieberg feels that there is notable adoption with Istio and Kubernetes with one group of people looking to adopt zero-trust principles while another is looking at it as part of broader initiative such as a FedRAMP program. He talks about the different approaches companies are making and how Tetrate is helping customers with their individual needs. 
• Frieberg discusses the evolution of Istio from an individual point technology to incorporating it into a larger platform, playing a role similar to that of a platform engineer within a company.  

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.