This document discusses using a service mesh like Istio to manage microservices in a containerized environment. It explains that monolithic applications can be divided into independent microservice components running in containers. A service mesh helps conquer the complexity of managing the containerized microservices by controlling communication between services and collecting telemetry data. The document outlines Istio's technical architecture with sidecars to secure and observe communication at the service layer, while a control plane manages configuration, policies, and security.