Tigera: Istio Ambient Mode for Calico: Service Mesh without Sidecars

As Kubernetes environments grow, teams often juggle separate tools for networking, network security, observability, and service mesh, creating unnecessary complexity. Calico’s unified platform brings these capabilities together into a single solution that works across every Kubernetes distribution. With Istio Ambient Mode included with Calico, you can now get service mesh benefits without the operational burden of sidecars as part of a single, easy to manage, enterprise supported platform.

In this session, you’ll see how Istio Ambient Mode for Calico provides powerful service-mesh capabilities in a simpler, more efficient way:

• No Sidecars: Reduces compute overhead and simplifies operations using ztunnel (L4) and waypoint proxies (L7), replacing the one-sidecar-per-pod model.
• Built-in Encryption: Provides automatic mTLS encryption for all service-to-service communication
• Calico network policies work on Istio Ambient Mode: No changes or rewrites needed.

Join us to learn how using Istio Ambient Mode with Calico improves performance, strengthens security, and streamlines application-level networking on Kubernetes.