Even without a dedicated SRE team, some companies might have individuals or teams who follow SRE practice. As the companies starts growing lack of SRE practice affect them adversely
There are some companies with IT departments that don’t have dedicated SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) teams. This can be due to several factors.
- Size of the organisation
- Maturity level of the organisation
- Scale of IT infrastructure
- Organisational structure
- Awareness
Size & Maturity Level of the organisation
In early stages of the organisation, its IT infrastructure might not be of high scale or complex. So they may not not see value in having a dedicated SRE team and allot funds towards the same. Hence tasks related to reliability and operations might be given to developers or other generic IT persons as an additional responsibility.
Some non-tech companies are not tech savvy. They might have well-established IT infrastructures, they may not necessarily prioritise the need for SREs.
Scale of IT infrastructure
Companies with non-critical IT environments think that they might not require the level of real time proactive monitoring. Some companies outsource their IT operations to service providers (MSPs) to get rid of the burden of reliability and monitoring.
Organisational structure:
Conventional IT hierarchy has a clear demarcation of responsibilities among the teams – Development, testing, Operations, etc. Some companies follow the DevOps approach where developers have more ownership over the entire lifecycle of their applications, including site reliability. This blurs the lines between development and SRE functions.
Lack of awareness
The concept of SRE is still relatively new to some companies. So they might not be aware of its benefits or lack the understanding to implement it effectively. Instead, they rely on premature levels of site reliability practice explained above
However, the importance of SRE is steadily growing. As companies embrace digital transformation and rely more on software-driven services, the need for high availability, reliability, and efficiency becomes paramount. As a result, the adoption of SRE is on the rise, and even companies without dedicated SRE teams now often incorporate SRE principles and practices into their IT operations.
Here are some things to consider:
- Even without a dedicated SRE team, some companies might have individuals or teams within their IT department who perform SRE-like tasks.
- The absence of a formal SRE team doesn’t necessarily mean a company’s systems are unreliable. However, it could indicate a less proactive approach to ensuring high availability and performance.
- The decision to have a dedicated SRE team is a strategic one that depends on various factors specific to each company.
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