Making of the SRE Omelette: Recent Episodes

Kevin Yu - Principal SRE, IBM Sustainability Software

Welcome to the Making of the SRE omelette podcast. In this podcast we explore the positive business and client success outcome from Site Reliability Engineering - and hear from experts on how they influenced the culture and mindset shift that led to those results.

Join us on this journey to surface ingredients for us to drive business and client success via SRE.

Preview of season 2 of the Making of the SRE Omelette podcast.

Sustainability is front and center of many conversations today - from broadrooms to living rooms. But does being sustainable simply mean reducing carbon footprint or does it mean more?

In season 2 of the podcast, we will talk to experts to understand the meaning of sustainability, the outcome we should be targeting. And how the practice of Site Reliability Engineering can help and lead us to achieve those outcomes.

So join Kevin and his guests as they crack some plant based eggs, add some ESG and turn sustainability ambition into reality.

In this bonus episode, Kyle shares his secret ingredient to make Omelette or anything taste extra great. As well as his two favorite styles of Omelette and their recipe.

This episode is about transforming SRE into how we do business and incorporate Reliability Engineering into the process of building products and features. Kyle Brown, IBM Fellow, VP, CTO for the CIOjoin us in this episode to talk about this mindset shift.

Kyle discusses how Reliability Engineering can be considered in the entire solution lifecycle, how to get there and what it looks like. Kyle also shares his insights for engineers to progress in their career and where Reliability Engineering will become in the future.

Lastly, as an avid chef, Kyle also shares with us recipe for a real Omelette in a bonus episode!

A three-legged stool will not wobble and is stable even on an uneven surface. In this episode, we listen to three Site Reliability Engineers working together to deliver client and business success. Abhay Choudhary, Andrew Lindsay, and Ashley Tate share their journeys that led to the roles they're in today in Data Science, Observability and Automation. The three disciplines resemble a three-legged stool that enables a stable progression for improving solution reliability.

Conversations also took us to what they enjoy the most about their jobs and what they'd prefer to do less of. Abhay, Andrew and Ashley also share with the audience their tips to get started in the SRE profession and ingredients to achieve the SRE outcome.

SRE is a team sport - without assists from team members, business and client successes would not be possible. Bill shares how we can be successful via learning, knowing the indicators to ask for help and how to foster an environment where people feel safe to ask for help. Lastly, his ingredient and recipe on building a high performing team. Listen in to Bill and let's level up on your teamwork!

Enterprise Design Thinking has positively influenced how companies build products that deliver happy user experience.

Can the same practice and mindset be applied to SRE? And if so, How?

Join us to discuss this topic is Karel Vredenburg. Karel is the VP of client insights and research at IBM. He is a great champion of tech vitality and has tremendous industry experiences improving the user experience of human interface to technology.

Listen in and hear Kare'l’s journey that transformed IBM, clients, c-suite executives, and academia to embrace Enterprise Design Thinking to creatively solve problems and surface designs that lead to happy users.

Storytelling helps with learning because engaging stories are easy to remember and are interesting.

David shares why he influenced the IBM CIO to learn from incidents via Story Telling and how other organization can follow this model to learn more about how the systems work and improve business and client success.

Listen to this episode to gain ideas on how you can turn your incident learning into an engaging session people look forward to attend and drive the outcome of better business and client success.

Humanity have an enduring desire to explore space - it has led us to push the boundaries of science and technology. Our guest today, Robert Barron has found an amazing connection between space exploration and SRE. I like to think he takes us to where no SRE has gone before!

Robert shares with us his favourite stories that draws parallel from Lunar Landing, Shuttle, space exploration to SRE. He also gives what SRE can take as inspiration from "Failure Is Not an Option" to build systems.

Crystal ball shows that the future of SRE is with AI & ML, having self monitoring, self healing, self managing and self optimizing. Essentially autopilot of operations. While we all appreciate and look forward to that, many people are not sure of the difference between automation and AI. If we all have tasks driven by automation... is that AIOps or is the AI of the future more than that?

To help us demystify AI and AIOps is Isabell Sippli. Isabell is the STSM at IBM AIOps and she has fielded many of those questions in her journey to enable clients with AIOps.

Timestamps:

[00:00 - 00:27] AIOps differentiator

[13:19 - 17:44] How to embrace AIOps

[17:45 - 19:53] Future of AIOps

[23:43 - 24:04] Isabelle's ingredient and recipe to embrace AIOps

SRE was created by Google to balance prioritization of features needed for reliability and operations against others - like that shinny new product feature. However, just because we say we embrace SRE culture, mindset or have an SRE team, doesn't mean this problem is magically solved.

Ron Baker, IBM Distinguished Engineer of SRE Operations in Sustainability Software shares how he successfully negotiated and drove this balance and deliver on SRE features.

Timestamps:

[00:00 - 00:59] Intro to the episode

[01:17 - 02:14] What SRE means to Ron

[02:28 - 03:30] Ron shares what success in SRE looks like

[04:02 - 08:44] Solving the prioritization problem

[09:01 - 10:31] Connecting risk with emotions

[10:53 - 14:04] How Ron drives SRE features to reality once prioritization is tackled

[14:32 - 16:52] Words of wisdom for those in SRE professions

[18:00 - 20:24] Where SRE needs to go to stay competitive and help solve problems

[21:33 - 21:53] Ron's ingredient and recipe for the SRE Omelette

Supply Chain has become a household term during the pandemic - this is because issues in supply chain has led to disruptions for consumer goods or even chicken sandwich - as Marshall pointed out in his blog post here (https://devopslamb.wordpress.com/2020/12/30/disaster-recovery-for-supply-chains/)

I'm joined by Marshall Lamb, Distinguished Engineer and CTO of Sterling, IBM Sustainability Software to discuss what a resilient supply chain looks like, how to build it and its relationship with SRE. Marshall also shares his guidance for practitioners interested in the supply chain industry and ingredients organizations should embrace to building resilient solutions.

Timestamps:

[00:00 - 00:54] Intro to the episode

[01:06 - 03:30] Marshall shares the chicken sandwich story

[04:41 - 10:31] What SRE means to Marshal from a supply chain perspective

[18:27 - 24:52] What "good enough" looks like in supply chain now, and is it changing?

[25:26 - 30:45] Marshall's words of wisdom to those interested in a supply chain related profession

[33:01 - 35:43] Marshall's ingredient and recipe for the SRE Omelette

Stacy Joines - IBM Fellow, VP and CTO in IBM WW Team for Global Markets shares her distinguished field experiences on driving client success for special events and peak shopping season like the US Cyber Monday. Stacy describes what it takes to make SRE outcome real, achieve the business and client success, and how to influence the prioritization to make it happen.

Timestamps:

[00:00 - 01:07] Intro to the episode

[01:29 - 07:10] IT culture: Through the cloud movement, hyper-scaling movement, etc.

[07:27 - 09:20] An example of a constant state of readiness

[10:21 - 13:25] The biggest driver for SRE

[13:41 - 18:52] Word's of wisdom for current and next gen SRE professionals

[22:49 - 25:07] Stacy's ingredient and recipe for the SRE Omelette

MP English - host of Google's SRE Prodcast takes the audience through what it's like being an SRE at Google. MP describes the meaning of SRE to them, how it has evolved at Google, how success is measured and how people reinforce the culture and show appreciation to each other. MP also gives advice for practitioners interested in the Site Reliability Engineering profession and the path for success.

Timestamps:

[00:30 - 00:52] Intro to episode

[01:00 - 01:52] MP's role at Google

[02:19 - 04:20] MP shares what SRE is at Google

[04:56 - 07:23] From problem-solving to organization: How has SRE evolved at Google

[09:51 - 12:43] How to measure the success of SRE at Google

[15:22 - 18:32] Method's of recognition for those who put in the effort ensuring no disruption

[19:20 - 22:37] Advice to those interested in the SRE profession

[25:36 - 27:46] MP's ingredient and recipe for driving the SRE mindset

Innovation is core to organizational success and SRE. Steven Astorino, IBM VP of Development for Data & AI and the IBM Canada Lab Director describes the journey he took to accelerate innovation at IBM - Area 631. Steven shares the problems he observed, how he solved them and highlights the success from the program. The program started in IBM Toronto lab and has since grown to 8 other IBM lab locations. Steven also gives an innovation shout out to Site Reliability Engineers and recipe to accelerate innovation at the enterprise.

Timestamps:

[00:19 - 01:14] Intro to episode

[01:24 - 04:22] What Are 631 is, and what problems hoping for Are 631 to solve

[04:39 - 05:58] Some successes that have come out of Area 631

[07:58 - 09:29] The value of Area 631 from a business and tech perspective

[10:09 - 11:06] Steven shares his thoughts on the next set of innovations needed by SRE

[11:37 - 13:02] Steven's ingredient and recipe to foster innovation at the workplace

Rama Akkiraju, IBM Fellow and CTO of IBM AIOps takes the audience through how AIOps can help companies achieve the SRE outcome of meeting SLO and having reliable services. Rama shares the recipe for companies to embrace SRE and gives us a glimpse into the future of SRE with AIOps.

Timestamps:

[00:26 - 00:51] Intro to the episode

[01:01 - 01:47] What AIOps is

[02:08 - 04:44] The benefits of AIOps, and the relationship between AIOps and SRE

[05:12 - 13:26] Challenges customers face that prevented them from getting out of reactive mode

[14:10 - 20:58] Where AIOps needs to be moving forward

[23:58 - 28:30] Words of wisdom for when you are looking to embrace SRE and AIOps

Kareem Yusuf, GM of IBM AI Applications and Blockchain tells the story behind the SRE Omelette. He gives the audience insights into why SRE is essential in delivering meaningful services to customers and describes how he measures ROI (Return on Investment) for SRE. Kareem also shares his thoughts on challenges SRE need to tackle next and gives us his recipe for the SRE Omelette.

Timestamps:

[00:07 - 01:10] Intro to the episode

[01:15 - 03:55] The context behind The Omelette

[04:22 - 06:39] What SRE means to Kareem and his customers

[07:09 - 11:30] How Kareem prioritizes SRE

[13:39 - 18:14] Measuring the ROI in SRE

[19:05 - 24:27] What does our future hold?

[24:54 - 30:09] Kareems ingredient and recipe for the SRE omelette

Jerry Cuomo, IBM Fellow, CTO of IBM Automation and host of The Art of Automation podcast takes the audience through the evolution of automation and how it relates to SRE. Jerry shares with the audience of what SRE means to him, touches on the ROI of SRE and ingredient to the SRE omelette. Jerry also has a shout out to all Site Reliability Engineers, past, current and future on innovation in this space.

Timestamps:

[00:02 - 01:41] Intro to the episode

[02:04 - 03:41] What automation is, and how it helps us

[04:42 - 07:12] Overcoming a lack of trust in automation

[08:57 - 11:51] Jerry's experience achieving the 50/50 standard

[12:49 - 13:44] What SRE means to Jerry

[14:17 - 20:16] Advice to the next gen of SRE: How to innovate the space

[22:09 - 25:26] Drive the prioritization of SRE through ROI

[25:50 - 27:17] Where is SRE going?

Ingo Averdunk, IBM Distinguished Engineer and SRE Profession leader takes the audience through the journey and motivation to establish SRE as a job family in IBM. Ingo also captures the SRE mindset and what practitioners (new or experienced) can take to practice SRE.

Timestamps:

[00:02 - 01:47] Intro to the episode

[02:07 - 03:15] What SRE means to Ingo, as a practice and as a profession

[03:45 - 06:29] The significance of IBM formally defining SRE as a job family

[07:34 - 08:30] The evolution of balancing the rules of development and operations

[08:56 - 11:03] The motivation to drive SRE

[11:53 - 13:52] Ingo's experience around qualifying the ROI for SRE

[14:36 - 15:38] Motivation for those in different roles to look at SRE

[16:01 - 19:06] Advice for those who may want to explore the SRE profession

[19:38 - 21:36] Where is SRE going?

[22:04 - 23:26] Ingo's ingredient and recipe for the SRE Omelette

An introduction to Making of the SRE Omelette Podcast. Kevin shares the motivation behind the show, explains what Omelette has to do with SRE and gives a preview of what to come.

Trailer for the Making of the SRE Omelette Podcast - A podcast that discusses the ingredients and path for achieving meaningful outcome for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).