HashiCorp's Consul allows operators to quickly connect applications across multiple clouds and runtime environments, enabling a global service mesh approach that supports workflows and enables security policies. Consul provides features such as encryption with mTLS, zero trust networking, and federation of workloads between cloud environments. The platform is designed to make multi-cloud networking easy for operators, allowing them to deploy a standalone cluster or integrate with existing clusters. Consul's deployment on Kubernetes using Helm charts enables flexible configuration options, including automatic bootstrapping and configuration of Access Control Lists, federation secrets, and mesh gateways. By deploying workloads across cloud environments, organizations can craft failover domains and progressive delivery patterns, while leveraging traffic shaping policies to control the flow of traffic. Consul's service mesh design pattern enables a network-first approach, where applications are treated as first-class citizens on the network, and connectivity is applied dynamically based on application requirements.