Tigera just wired Istio Ambient Mode into Calico. That means you get sidecarless service mesh, think mTLS, L4/L7 policy, and observability, without stuffing every pod with a sidecar. It’s all handled by lean zTunnel and Waypoint proxies.
Ports stay visible, so Calico and Istio policies play nice. No rewrites, no headaches. Managed top to bottom with the Tigera Operator.
