Why site reliability engineering is crucial to eCommerce businesses

When you’re running an eCommerce business, your livelihood depends on your site staying operational. Downtime or outages will make it impossible for your customers to make purchases and damage your company’s reputation in the future.

It’s important that you’re able to create a reliable website that stays online even in times of heavy traffic. You also need to make sure that you can respond to any problems quickly and efficiently.

However, all of that is easier said than done. This is where site reliability engineering (SRE) comes in. SRE, an approach to reliability that has been used by some of the giants of the tech world for years, is becoming more and more widespread. But what does SRE actually entail and why is it so crucial for your ecommerce company? Read on to find out more.

What is site reliability engineering?

There’s never been a more exciting time to be in the eCommerce sector. With constantly evolving technology, for example, PaaS features and more and more customers focusing on online shopping, eCommerce is a flourishing industry. Alongside this dramatic growth is a drastic change in how eCommerce companies choose to monitor and safeguard their site infrastructures.

SRE is the main change that we’re seeing in the eCommerce sector. Referring to a combined and integrated approach to site reliability, SRE unifies systems engineering with software engineering and operations.

Rather than using a team of IT experts and software developers simply to respond to issues with your site when they arise, SRE is all about crafting a secure and reliable site architecture. This approach makes the likelihood of significant issues as small as possible.

Of course, no approach to site architecture would actively look to make a site unreliable. But what makes SRE so useful is that it prioritizes system reliability. Through various areas of focus, such as user capacity, latency, and incident response, site reliability engineers look to ensure that your site remains up and running at all times.

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SRE has been a long-standing practice used by some tech giants, with services like Google Tag Manager benefiting from the application of SRE principles to ensure their reliability. Now, however, increasing accessibility to site engineering tools means that smaller eCommerce companies are starting to integrate it into their IT approach.

Benefits of SRE

You should now understand what the SRE mindset looks like. Prioritizing site reliability through a mixture of proactive and reactive practices is set to be one of the biggest eCommerce trends over the next year. But what exactly are the benefits of using an SRE approach in your eCommerce infrastructure?

1. Increased site reliability

Implementing an SRE approach in your eCommerce infrastructure leads to a significant increase in your site’s reliability. Rather than adopting reactive measures when an issue occurs, systems reliability engineers take a proactive stance toward reliability. They aim to prevent issues by creating a site infrastructure that’s robust and secure.

This will reduce the likelihood of critical issues and ensure that your site remains operational even during peak periods of heavy traffic. When it comes to the highly competitive industry of eCommerce, preventing periods of downtime can be the difference between taking a loss and making a profit.

2. Better incident response

While SRE primarily aims to prevent incidents, the SRE mindset is also a great way to optimize your teams’ response to issues such as downtime or outages. SRE places a strong emphasis on a meticulous incident response strategy and addressing issues swiftly and efficiently.

Your site reliability engineers, well-versed in the intricacies of your platform, will be adept at identifying and resolving problems before they escalate. This means that your customers will have the best possible user experience while also minimizing the cost impact of an outage on your business. As a result, you’ll be able to retain your customers.

3. Higher levels of scalability

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When you’re in the eCommerce sector, you should make sure that your company is always able to scale up. After all, there’s nothing worse than having your ambitions limited by your technological capabilities.

SRE is a great way to ensure that your business is scalable. It strategically plans for user capacity by analyzing current user loads and latency patterns and predicting future traffic spikes. This is a forward-thinking approach that makes sure that your site can scale seamlessly to meet increasing demands.

On top of this, SRE teams’ approach to infrastructure and resource deployment lets you better allocate your resources as your company grows. All of this will help you prevent performance bottlenecks as you scale up your eCommerce site.

4. Continuous improvement

Another key benefit of using SRE in eCommerce is that it forces your teams to adopt a culture of continuous improvement. One of the main ways that this is achieved is through a constant analysis of resource utilization.

By closely monitoring and analyzing system performance, site reliability engineers can identify areas where resources can be allocated more effectively. This not only improves site performance but also leads to cost savings through optimal resource use. This efficient use of resources will let you build a sustainable and cost-effective eCommerce business.

As well as this, SRE can be a great way to ensure that your site is constantly updating its security safeguards. Having constant monitoring and updates can be a great way to respond to new security regulations and information about cyber threats. This can be especially useful if your company uses hybrid teams.

How to implement SRE in your eCommerce business

The benefits of SRE for eCommerce should be obvious. Without using an SRE operational model, you take an outdated approach to site reliability and consistency. But how can you transition your eCommerce business to an SRE model?

1. Assess your current infrastructure

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The implementation process should always start with a thorough assessment of your current site infrastructure. Identify potential bottlenecks and areas of vulnerability and find the records of any incidents that you’ve had in the past.

For instance, an inbound call center platform might typically have issues with latency that can disrupt the whole business model. An assessment of this infrastructure would identify this as a point of high importance.

This is an assessment that will act as the first building block as you improve your site’s reliability. You’ll be able to prioritize and target improvements and enable site reliability engineers to develop a tailored SRE strategy aligned with the specific needs of your eCommerce platform.

2. Foster collaboration

One of the things that many people get confused about when it comes to SRE is the overlap between SRE and DevOps. While they aren’t the same (SRE is focused specifically on reliability), the core principle of collaboration is shared between SRE and any DevOps Team. This means that you have to cultivate a culture of cross-functional collaboration.

Start by emphasizing collaboration between different teams, including systems engineering, software engineering, and operations. This will require you to break down organizational silos and provide open communication channels between teams to ensure that you have a collaborative environment that encourages a successful SRE approach.

3. Establish metrics for success

SRE is all about improving your ecommerce customer experience. It’s therefore crucial that you have some metrics to work out whether or not this endeavor has been successful. You should use service level objectives (SLOs) and service level indicators (SLIs) to measure the performance and reliability of your eCommerce site.

This will provide a quantifiable way to assess the success of your SRE implementation. Regularly review and update SLOs based on changing business needs and evolving user expectations to maintain a high standard of site reliability.

4. Implement automation

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Automation is a pivotal aspect of SRE because it enables rapid response to incidents and reduces workload. Implement automation tools for tasks such as monitoring, alerting, and incident resolution in order to assist your engineering teams.

This not only improves operational efficiency but also minimizes the risk of human error, contributing to a more reliable and resilient eCommerce infrastructure. Without automation, you’ll soon find that your transition to SRE can place unmanageable levels of workload on your engineers and operations managers.

5. Embrace continuous improvement

If you want to truly implement an SRE mindset in your eCommerce business, you’ll need to accept that it is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring and improvement. Create a workflow that allows you to regularly assess the effectiveness of your SRE practices, analyze incident reports, and identify areas for improvement.

This means that your reliability engineers will need to be constantly looking for new types of software, such as the SaaS management platform provided by Upsun, and have a culture of continuous learning and adaptability to stay on top of evolving challenges. By embracing a mindset of continuous integration and improvement, your eCommerce business can proactively optimize site reliability over time.

Site reliability engineering: the future of eCommerce site reliability

An an eCommerce professional, you can’t afford to have downtime on your site. That’s why SRE is so crucial: the proactive and integrated nature of SRE not only enhances site reliability, but also fortifies your business against potential disruptions.

By prioritizing system reliability, optimizing incident response, planning for scalability, and ensuring efficient resource utilization, you’ll be able to use an SRE approach to thrive. Start integrating SRE into your eCommerce business today!