MICRO-MESH — Fine-grained processing layer for cloud mesh workloads

IBM Cloud should expose a micro-processing layer inside its service mesh: sub-service, function-level placement and scaling controls so mesh workloads can be tuned at a finer grain than today's service/pod level. Operators running dense mesh topologies (sidecars, gateways, event brokers, policy agents) currently over-provision whole services because they cannot isolate the hot micro-function — the JSON transform, the auth check, the schema validation — that actually saturates. This proposal adds: (a) function-level telemetry and cost attribution inside the mesh; (b) placement policies that pin hot micro-functions to optimal zones or hardware; (c) independent autoscaling for micro-functions without redeploying the parent service; (d) a mesh-efficiency score in the console showing waste per micro-function. Benefits: lower cloud spend through surgical scaling, clearer performance root-causing in complex meshes, and a practical path to FinOps accountability below the service boundary. The layer is additive — existing service-level controls keep working unchanged.