Solo.io

Managed Istio Service Mesh

Run Istio at scale with multi-cluster management, hardened security, and sidecar or ambient mode, all backed by Solo Enterprise for Istio, built by the leading contributor to the Istio project.

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Istio at scale

Real benchmark and cost results from production Istio deployments

An infographic titled "mTLS IN MINUTES" highlighting the speed and ease of securing a network. It features a large headline: "5 min: mTLS + Observability for Every Pod." Four key metrics are displayed: 0 Code Changes, 0 Sidecars Needed, 100% Traffic Encrypted, and L4 Telemetry Included. A footer at the bottom includes a tag icon and the instruction: "Just label your namespace. That's it.COST SAVINGS ANALYSIS" comparing Sidecar and Ambient mesh architectures. It claims a 30-50% lower cost for Ambient Mesh, citing a reduction from $500/pod/year (Sidecar) to $50/pod/year (Ambient), resulting in $450 savings per pod. The footer concludes: "No sidecar = no sidecar costs.An infographic titled "SCALE BENCHMARK RESULTS" showcasing the performance metrics of a networking control plane. The headline achievement is supporting 100M Pods Across 2,000 Clusters. Four key metrics are highlighted: 2,000 Clusters Connected, 2K/sec Pod Changes, <100ms Propagation Time, and ~10% CPU Usage. A footer note adds: "Control plane fits on a Raspberry Pi."

Why Teams Choose Us

“We’re running Istio ourselves, and support costs are unpredictable once something breaks in production.”

Solo Enterprise for Istio gives you a hardened distribution and production support from the team that leads Istio’s development, so you know what you’re getting before you need it.

“Keeping up with Istio CVEs and patches on our own release cadence is a constant drain on our team.”

Solo’s hardened Istio builds carry extended CVE and security-fix support well past community end-of-life, with FIPS-compliant options available.

“We want to go sidecarless with Istio’s ambient mode, but can’t migrate every workload off sidecars at once.”

Solo’s builds support sidecar and ambient mode interoperability, so you can move workloads to ambient mesh gradually with zero-downtime migration instead of an all-or-nothing cutover.

Customer proof

"We’re here to give engineers the confidence to move fast, safely. Solo Enterprise for Istio helped us get there."

- Confluent

Trust & compliance

SOC 2

SOC 2

Certification supports security and procurement review for regulated Kubernetes environments

OSS roots

OSS roots

Build on Envoy, Istio, Cilium, and Gateway API foundations for open source service mesh adoption.

CNCF maintainer status

CNCF maintainer status

keeps Solo.io engineers close to the projects shaping cloud native mesh standards.

FIPS builds

FIPS builds

provide FIPS 140-2 validated options for service mesh security requirements.

Published SLAs

Published SLAs

Define support expectations for enterprise service mesh operations.

Customer references

Customer references

include production outcomes from teams running large-scale Kubernetes networking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Solo Enterprise for Istio?

Solo Enterprise for Istio is Solo.io’s hardened, supported distribution of Istio, built by the project’s leading contributor. It adds production support, extended CVE coverage, and enterprise features on top of upstream Istio.

Do you support Istio’s ambient mode, or just sidecars?

Both. Solo’s builds support sidecar and ambient mode side by side, so you can migrate workloads to ambient mesh gradually rather than switching your entire mesh at once.

How do you handle Istio multi-cluster deployments?

Solo Enterprise for Istio centralizes configuration, policy, and observability across multiple clusters and clouds, so platform teams manage one consistent mesh instead of a separate Istio install per cluster.

Istio vs. Envoy: what’s the difference?

Envoy is the proxy that handles traffic at the data plane; Istio is the control plane that configures and manages a fleet of Envoy proxies as a service mesh. Solo Enterprise for Istio builds on both.

What does Istio enterprise support cost?

Cost depends on your cluster count, traffic, and support tier. A demo is the fastest way to get a number scoped to your environment rather than a generic estimate.

See Solo Enterprise for Istio in Action

Request a demo to see how a hardened, enterprise-supported Istio distribution fits your clusters, security requirements, and migration plans.

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