Solo.io, a cloud-native application networking company, recently announced the release of Istio OSS 121 with a new ‘ambient mode’ enabled for Amazon EKS from AWS. This release fast-tracks enterprise service-mesh adoption while delivering remarkable cost savings of up to 80% for existing Istio users.

“Solo.io’s implementation of Istio with its new ambient mode represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of enterprise networking,” said Idit Levine, founder and CEO of Solo.io. “By enabling sidecarless deployments of Istio, we’re able to deliver greater simplicity, efficiency, and cost savings to Amazon EKS, AWS Lambda, and Amazon EKS Anywhere users, we’re empowering organizations to accelerate their digital transformation journey. And by working with AWS, Solo’s potential customer base has grown exponentially.”

Also available within Solo.io’s Gloo Mesh, Istio’s new ambient mode represents the cutting-edge dataplane architecture within Istio free from the constraint of traditional, resource-intensive sidecars. This groundbreaking innovation originated from collaborative contributions by Solo.io and the Istio community.

The ability to deploy without sidecars presents a significant advantage, as it offers enhanced security, comprehensive monitoring, and advanced observability. In addition, users can significantly reduce the complexities and costs of deploying and maintaining upstream open-source service mesh by up to 80%.

This approach is particularly beneficial for customers seeking to expedite their workload migration to microservices, as it simplifies and accelerates the adoption of Amazon EKS at scale. By combining efficient, cost-effective resource utilization with streamlined deployment processes, organizations can leverage Amazon EKS more effectively to accelerate cloud digital transformation initiatives.