Who Makes Envoy: A Comprehensive Look

Introduction

Envoy is a modern, open-source cloud-native proxy and communication bus that is designed for large-scale microservices architectures. It was created by Lyft, a ride-sharing company that was looking for a more scalable, reliable, and performant way to manage their infrastructure. Today, Envoy is used by many companies, including Google, Apple, Salesforce, and IBM. But who makes Envoy? Let’s take a closer look.

The History of Envoy

Envoy was first introduced by Lyft in 2016 as a replacement for their previous proxy, which was causing issues with reliability and scalability. Matt Klein, a software engineer at Lyft, was tasked with creating a new proxy that would be more efficient and effective. Klein started by developing a prototype that was inspired by the HAProxy and NGINX proxies, but with a focus on modern microservices architectures.

After a successful trial period, Envoy was open-sourced in September 2016, and the project has been growing rapidly ever since. Today, Envoy is maintained by a community of open-source contributors, with Lyft continuing to play a major role in its development and evolution.

The Team Behind Envoy

While Envoy is an open-source project that relies on community contributions, there are several key individuals who are responsible for its ongoing development and maintenance. These include:

Matt Klein

Matt Klein is the creator of Envoy and a software engineer at Lyft. He has been working on proxy technologies for over a decade and has played a major role in the development of both Envoy and Lyft’s infrastructure.

Harvey Tuch

Harvey Tuch is the engineering manager for the Envoy team at Lyft. He has over 20 years of experience in software development and has been with Lyft since 2016.

Lizan Zhou

Lizan Zhou is a software engineer on the Envoy team at Lyft. She has been with the company since 2018 and has played a key role in developing many of Envoy’s features.

Steve Sloka

Steve Sloka is a software engineer on the Envoy team at Google. He has been working on Envoy since its early days and has contributed to many of its key features.

These are just a few of the many individuals who are involved in the ongoing development of Envoy. The project relies on a diverse and dedicated community of contributors, with new members joining all the time.

The Role of the Community

Envoy is an open-source project, which means that anyone can contribute to its development and maintenance. The project is hosted on GitHub, where contributors can submit bug reports, feature requests, and code changes. The Envoy community is diverse and inclusive, with contributors from many different backgrounds and organizations.

One of the key benefits of an open-source project like Envoy is that it can evolve and improve much more rapidly than a closed-source project. This is because there are many more eyes on the code, and anyone can suggest improvements or spot issues. The Envoy community is very active, with new releases and updates being made on a regular basis.

The Future of Envoy

Envoy is already a popular and widely used proxy, but its future looks even brighter. The project is constantly evolving, with new features and improvements being added all the time. Some of the key areas of focus for the Envoy team include:

Performance

Envoy is already a very performant proxy, but the team is always looking for ways to make it even faster and more efficient. This includes optimizing the code, reducing the number of context switches, and improving the memory footprint.

Security

As microservices architectures become more prevalent, security becomes an increasingly important concern. The Envoy team is working on ways to improve the security of the proxy, including support for mutual TLS and improved authentication mechanisms.

Observability

One of the challenges of microservices architectures is that they can be very difficult to debug and monitor. The Envoy team is working on ways to improve the observability of the proxy, including better logging and tracing capabilities.

Compatibility

Envoy is designed to be compatible with many different platforms and environments, including Kubernetes, Istio, and AWS. The team is working to ensure that Envoy remains compatible with the latest versions of these platforms, as well as with new technologies as they emerge.

Conclusion

Envoy is a powerful and versatile cloud-native proxy that is used by many of the world’s largest companies. While it was created by Lyft, it is now maintained by a diverse and dedicated community of open-source contributors. The future of Envoy looks very bright, with ongoing development and improvements in areas like performance, security, observability, and compatibility. Whether you are a developer, a DevOps engineer, or an infrastructure architect, Envoy is definitely a project worth keeping an eye on.