Profile
Tetrate is an enterprise service mesh platform that extends and commercializes Istio and Envoy capabilities for large-scale deployments. Built by the original creators of Istio, it provides comprehensive service mesh management across multi-cluster, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments. The platform combines pure upstream open-source distributions with enterprise-grade features, focusing on security, observability, and traffic management. Tetrate's solutions serve Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, offering both fully managed platforms and subscription-based support for organizations requiring production-grade service mesh implementations.
Focus
Tetrate addresses the fundamental challenges of managing microservices communication and security in distributed environments. The platform solves persistent issues around service discovery, traffic management, and security policy enforcement across heterogeneous infrastructure. It enables organizations to implement consistent networking, security, and observability capabilities across traditional and modern workloads without requiring wholesale infrastructure replacement. The solution targets platform engineering teams, security administrators, and application developers who need enterprise-grade service mesh capabilities with operational simplicity and comprehensive governance controls.
Background
Founded in 2018 by Varun Talwar and Jeyappragash Jeyakeerthi, key creators of Istio and gRPC at Google and Twitter respectively, Tetrate emerged from the need to make service mesh technology enterprise-ready. The platform has achieved significant adoption, including deployments at the U.S. Air Force and major financial institutions. Tetrate maintains strong connections to the open-source community while providing commercial solutions, operating as a privately held company with backing from major venture capital firms including Dell Technologies Capital and Sapphire Ventures.
Main features
Multi-cluster service mesh orchestration
The platform implements a hierarchical control architecture that enables centralized management of distributed service meshes across multiple clusters and environments. A sophisticated management plane orchestrates multiple Istio control planes while maintaining local autonomy. This architecture supports automatic service discovery and failover across clusters, enabling organizations to implement reliable active-active deployment patterns. The system handles both Kubernetes-based microservices and traditional VM workloads, facilitating incremental modernization strategies.
Zero-trust security framework
Tetrate provides comprehensive security controls built on zero-trust principles, implementing automatic mutual TLS encryption for all service-to-service communications. The platform manages workload identity verification, certificate lifecycle, and fine-grained access control policies across the entire service mesh. Integration capabilities with external identity providers and policy engines enable organizations to maintain existing security infrastructure while implementing mesh-level security controls. The framework includes FIPS-validated builds for regulated environments.
Advanced traffic management and observability
The platform delivers sophisticated traffic routing and observability features across distributed environments. Traffic management capabilities support canary deployments, blue-green rollouts, and A/B testing through declarative configuration. The observability system collects and correlates metrics, traces, and logs from all services, providing unified visibility across the mesh. Advanced features include automatic service dependency mapping, anomaly detection, and capacity planning insights, enabling proactive application health management.
