>: Istio is being developed and maintained as open-source software. We encourage contributions and feedback from the community at-large.</p><p><em>Platform-independent</em>: Istio is not targeted at any specific deployment environment. During the initial stages of development, Istio will support Kubernetes-based deployments. However, Istio is being built to enable rapid and easy adaptation to other environments.</p><p><em>Service mesh</em>: Istio is designed to manage communications between microservices an