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Containers and microservices have given rise to a new network architecture paradigm called service mesh, but IT industry watchers disagree about whether it'll see widespread enterprise use. A service mesh architecture uses a proxy called a sidecar container attached to every application container, VM or container orchestration pod, depending on the type of service mesh in use. This proxy can then attach to centralized control plane software, which gathers fine-grained network telemetry data, applies network management policies or proxy configuration changes, and establishes and enforces network security policies. It's still early days for the service mesh architecture in IT systems, but, as with containers, its rise to prominence has been rapid. At the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF's) KubeCon and CloudNativeCon in December 2017, service mesh had already bypassed containers as the hottest topic of conversation among cutting-edge DevOps shops. "We often find ourselves wanting to build application software, but what ...