Where Service Mesh Came From

The Hype, History, and Where Organizations are at on Their Service Mesh Journeys

Hype, History, and Service Mesh Journeys

Understanding the history and current state of service mesh adoption will help IT leaders determine where a service mesh fits in their roadmap.
Although service mesh has gotten its share of hype, the technology is making strides, supported by open-source projects and vendor integrations.
Surveys show companies are evenly distributed across service mesh stages: no plan, planning, piloting, and in production.

Getting Past the Service Mesh Hype

The hype around service mesh has been building

Around 2015, the emergence of microservices at scale gave rise to the call for strategic technology to handle service-to-service communication. Service mesh was starting to be touted as the solution.

A few years later, service mesh technology had evolved within open source projects, but almost none of the container management systems included it, so it was not yet easy to deploy.

Within the past two years, the demand has continued to grow as containerization of apps and development of microservices has exploded within a wide range of organizations.

It is time to get past the hype so IT leaders can make sound decisions around service mesh.

What are the IT and business benefits?
What are actual results from industry case studies?
What should you consider first to see if service mesh is worth pursuing?
If you are going to explore a service mesh, what should you be on the lookout for?

The service mesh probably doesn’t actually hold the title of ‘the World’s Most Over-Hyped Technology’ — that dubious distinction probably goes to Bitcoin or AI. Maybe it’s merely in the top 5.”

- William Morgan, one of the creators of Linkerd.

“Service Mesh” © Sebastian Caceres. Reprinted with permission.

Brief History of Service Mesh

Born in software-based businesses, open sourced, and becoming integrated into products

Service Mesh Journeys

Where organizations are at with planning, piloting, and deploying service mesh

Recent surveys by NewStack, CCNF, ServiceMesher, and 451 Research give percentages where different organizations are at in terms of service mesh.

Roughly, organizations are evenly spread out over the four service mesh stages, with 20–25% on average in each stage. Service meshes are running in production, but many organizations are planning, evaluating, or piloting a service mesh

In general, organizations that have evolved DevOps practices, such as automated release cycles and daily code check-ins, are more likely to be considering a service mesh.

When an organization faces challenges ensuring the availability and reliability of complex systems, they become interested in service mesh.

There is even more of a business case if the organization finds its current architecture is not scalable enough to keep pace with rapidly changing business needs.

The technology to deploy service mesh continues to get easier to use.