Why Calico was named as a Leader in the GigaOm Radar Report for Container Networking
In 2025, as modern applications became ever more distributed and the use of Kubernetes continued to proliferate, the role of container networking was critical. Today’s enterprises demand networking solutions that can scale, secure, and connect services reliably, whether those services run across multiple clouds, hybrid environments, or on-premises clusters.
We’re proud to share insights from the recently released 2025 GigaOm Radar Report for Container Networking, a comprehensive evaluation of vendor solutions across innovation, platform maturity, and real-world operational capabilities, and to highlight the unique strengths of Calico Cloud and Calico Enterprise as recognized in the report.
What the GigaOm Radar Report on Container Networking Covers
GigaOm’s Radar Report evaluates container networking solutions across a spectrum of criteria that matter most to IT infrastructure teams and cloud architects. These include:
- Network Policy Definition: Declarative, granular network policies consistently enforced across clusters
- Routing (Layer 3/Layer 4): Scalable routing between pods, services, and non-container workloads using Layer 3 (IP) and Layer 4 (TCP) protocols
- Layer 7 Networking: Application-aware traffic handling with visibility using Layer 7 protocols
- Load Balancing: Controls how traffic is distributed across instances, using latency history to select optimal paths and adjust traffic flows in real time
- Container Network Security: Comprehensive security including segmentation, traffic observability, and dynamic threat response
- DevOps Suitability: Automated networking that enables development teams to evolve without creating infrastructure bottlenecks
- eBPF Implementation: High-performance data plane that delivers deep visibility and efficient traffic handling
- Observability and Diagnostics: End-to-end flow visibility with accelerated root-cause analysis
Tigera & Calico: Positioned for Leadership
We’re honored that GigaOm recognizes Tigera, the creator of Project Calico, as a leading platform for container networking.
Calico Recognized as a Leader and Outperformer in the GigaOm 2025 Container Networking Radar
The 2025 GigaOm Radar for Container Networking positions Tigera (Calico) in the inner “Leaders” circle as an Outperformer, highlighting its balance of deep platform capabilities and high innovation.
GigaOm highlights Calico in the Platform Play/Innovation quadrant, underscoring its strong balance of innovation and deep unified platform capabilities across container networking.
Customers and evaluators alike recognize that effective container networking is more than just connectivity; it must also deliver network security and observability without imposing complexity or unnecessary operational overhead.
Key Calico Strengths Called Out in the Report
Here’s where Calico stands out according to GigaOm’s evaluation:
1. Comprehensive Network Security Capabilities
Calico’s networking and security capabilities extend far beyond basic connectivity:
- Network segmentation and microsegmentation
- Fine-grained traffic filtering and access controls
- Integrated IDS/IPS and deep packet inspection
- Control and secure egress traffic with fixed IPs, policy routing, and auditing.
- Enforce secure ingress with policy-based access control and traffic visibility
What This Means For Teams: These built-in protections make Calico a uniquely powerful choice for teams that require security at speed and scale.
2. Network Policy Staging and Recommendations
The report highlights Calico Enterprise’s ability to generate policy recommendations from flow logs, helping teams understand actual traffic patterns and proactively build effective policies. Policies are applied in role-based tiers, enabling governance and compliance without blocking team autonomy.
Why It Matters: Teams can safely move from “allow all” to least-privilege networking without breaking production, reducing risk while maintaining developer velocity.
3. Flexible, High-Performance Networking
Calico supports multiple data planes to include eBPF, nftables, iptables, and Windows offering unmatched flexibility across environments and workload types to include support for VM and bare metal workloads. This multiple data plane support ensures scalability and performance while enabling customers to choose the approach that fits their infrastructure needs best.
The Bottom Line: Teams get high-performance networking that adapts to their environment today without forcing disruptive platform changes tomorrow.
4. Cross-Environment Connectivity
Modern deployments span more than one environment. Calico’s networking architecture excels at networking and network security across hybrid and multi-cloud Kubernetes clusters, providing resilient, predictable connectivity for distributed applications.
How Calico Helps Teams: Applications communicate consistently across clouds and data centers, eliminating fragile workarounds and reducing operational risk as environments grow.
What This Means for Teams Today
For engineering and development teams, the Radar Report reinforces that container networking is no longer a “nice to have”, it’s essential. As organizations deploy more complex, distributed applications:
- Networks must be secure by default, with policy enforcement that scales
- Teams need visibility and intelligence into traffic flows to reduce risk and troubleshoot quickly
- Teams should benefit from application-aware (Layer 7) controls that improve traffic control, security, visibility, and troubleshooting without adding operational complexity
- Platforms must deliver both deep capability and ease of use to support modern development
Calico’s recognition in the 2025 GigaOm Radar Report shows how a comprehensive approach, combining networking, network security, policy automation, and observability, can help organizations meet these challenges head-on.
Looking Ahead
At Tigera, we believe that the next wave of innovation in container networking will focus on:
- Even tighter integration with observability and network security tooling
- Smarter, automated network policy recommendations and enforcement
- Better combined use of L7 and L3/L4 network and network security capabilities
We’re excited to continue delivering on this vision with Calico Cloud and Calico Enterprise, empowering organizations to build, ship, and operate modern applications confidently, no matter which Kubernetes platform they run on.
Learn More and Download the Report
To dive deeper into the full insights from the 2025 GigaOm Radar Report for Container Networking and learn why Calico continues to lead, download the complete report.
The post Key Insights from the 2025 GigaOm Radar for Container Networking appeared first on Tigera - Creator of Calico.
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