What a year it’s been! Solo.io 2022 year in review

This year, Solo.io is proud to have built on the incredible momentum we experienced in 2021. We’ve witnessed impressive growth, product innovation, and recognition in our field. From huge launches to book publications to keynote speeches, there was never a dull moment. 

Above all, we’re pleased with how our products continue to help our customers simplify how they secure and scale cloud-native applications. As we reflect on all we’ve accomplished this year, we wanted to share some of the highlights with you. 

Product innovation

Product innovation remains at the forefront of our focus as we help customers address challenges like growing faster, scaling, dealing with more complex security, and running across multiple cloud environments. 

Some of our product highlights in 2022 include: 

• In March, we launched Gloo GraphQL at SoloCon 2022.
• In May, we announced Cilium support, which would eventually become Gloo Network.
• In September, we launched Istio Ambient Mesh, representing the next generation in service mesh. This collaboration with Google will shape the future of Istio and service mesh in the market. 
• In October, we launched Gloo Platform, Gloo Gateway, and Gloo Network. Gloo Platform is the next-generation architecture that will simplify how companies manage application networking, security, microservices and APIs. 
• In December, we released more than 70 features and fixes to Gloo Edge, including API Gateway backend enhancements that increase performance and scalability.

Publications

One of the ways we’ve best represented our industry expertise this year is with the Istio-focused books written by team members Rinor Maloku, Christian Posta, and Lin Sun. 

Christian Posta and Rinor Maloku wrote Istio in Action to help readers better understand how to reduce microservice complexity using Istio. Lin Sun and Christian Posta wrote Ambient Mesh Explained to explain the benefits of Istio ambient mesh and how to get started using it. 

We also published a report based on our 2022 Service Mesh Adoption Survey. The report dove into how organizations are adopting microservices, as well as their usage of Kubernetes and Istio. See the key findings – and read the full report – here.

Team growth and industry leadership

The growth and success of our own team demonstrates our commitment to hiring experts and supporting their influence in the industry. 

Some key moments within our company include: 

• Growing the overall company by 2x
• Having Solo team members in 16 countries
• Growing the engineering team by 2x
• Growing the sales team by 10x
• Growing the marketing team by 4x
• Expanding the federal market sales team
• Adding to the executive team with Brittni Beers-Branco as chief people officer
• AND WE’RE STILL HIRING!

We also have members of the team representing us in important industry roles. This year, VP and Global Field CTO Christian Posta was named to the Istio Steering Committee. Software Engineer Daniel Hawton was the Istio 1.16 Release Manager. Software Engineer Greg Hanson is the Istio Product Security working group co-lead.

Events and accolades

We showed up in more places than ever in 2022. From conferences that highlighted our influence, to accolades that demonstrate our key role in the market, there were a lot of reasons to celebrate. 

Solo CEO Idit Levine presents at Application Networking Day, a precursor to the main KubeCon event, in October 2022.

Our CEO Idit Levine gave the keynote address at both ServiceMeshCon Europe and ServiceMeshCon North America. We also launched Application Networking Day at KubeCon North America, resulting in the conference’s most attended event. We’re excited to expand Application Networking Day into its own event in 2023! 

Read our recap on KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2022 and Introducing Application Networking Day.

Our very own Solo Academy course catalog grew from 2 courses to 28, including 6 courses that offer certifications. As of now, we’ve issued more than 2,500 certifications, helped more than 1,600 users learn about our products and the open source technologies that they’re built on, and ran 127 live workshops across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

As for accolades, here is how Solo showed up this year: 

• Named a leader in 2022 GigaOm Service Mesh Radar 
• Included as the only new company in 2022 Gartner MQ for Full Lifecycle API Management
• Named in 2022 InfoWorld Technology of the Year 
• Listed in 2022 CRN Top 10 Hottest Cloud Computing Startups
• Listed in 2022 CRN Top 10 Coolest Cloud Computing Startup Companies
• Named a 2022 DevOps Dozen Finalist for:
  • Best Kubernetes Platform/Service (Gloo Platform)
  • Most Innovative DevOps Open Source Project (Istio Ambient Mesh)
  • DevOps Executive of the Year (Idit Levine)

We’re grateful to every one of you – customers and community members alike – who have been with us on this journey in 2022. We look forward to delivering more innovation and more community contributions in 2023.