Hakuhodo Japan
Through the integration of marketing and technology, Hakuhodo Technologies, a specialised technology company of the Hakuhodo DY Group, one of Japan’s top media and advertising holding companies, is committed to improving Google’s software development process in order to provide new experiences and value to society and consumers.
The cross-functional operations of Hakuhodo Technologies’ IT Infrastructure Team guarantee the reliable functioning of the public cloud, which underpins the range of services offered by the Hakuhodo Japan DY Group. In addition, they offer operational assistance and Google’s knowledge for public cloud efforts.
Google’s value is demonstrated by their success in the infrastructure and cloud domains, their strong feeling of ownership, and Google’s willingness to take on the challenge of generating new value.
History and difficulties
The infrastructure team is responsible for managing shared infrastructure resources and creating and running application infrastructure specific to each internal organisation and service.
Every team in the organisation has incorporated aspects of site reliability engineering (SRE) and platform engineering (PE) into their work, such as creating observability systems and conducting post-mortems. Nevertheless, they faced two main difficulties:
- The team quickly increased in size as the infrastructure developed, adding additional personnel with a variety of backgrounds. This necessitated task standardisation and clarification, as well as group comprehension of their existing state and goal alignment.
- Google’s primary method of communication with the app team is via a ticketing system. Google cloud have increased the size of their personnel and implemented remote work. Team members might not be as familiar as they formerly were as a result. This unfamiliarity may lead to little misunderstandings that quickly get out of hand.
Google Cloud think that building mutual respect and working relationships between the infrastructure and application teams is crucial to long-term company growth as their systems and organisation evolve. This is now a crucial component of Google’s approach.
Google team think that the key to resolving the aforementioned problems is to cultivate an SRE attitude among members of the infrastructure and application teams and establish a culture built on that shared understanding. They chose to execute Google Cloud Consulting’s “SRE Core” program, which is the initial phase of implementing SRE processes, in order to accomplish this.
Modification
First, they restored communication between the application and infrastructure teams which had previously had little interaction through the “SRE Core” tool. Working with the application team was crucial because, for instance, some parts of the program required information that was difficult for infrastructure members to obtain and comprehend on their own.
One of the SRE measures, Google’s critical user journey (CUJ), was developed in accordance with the app’s business needs and real users’ actions. Usually, the app team is in charge of this data, and they keep in regular contact with the business side. This time, they worked with the application team to build the required components for SRE, conduct risk analysis, establish service level indicators (SLIs) and service level objectives (SLOs) that included error budgets, and create a CUJ.
This cooperative effort and mutual comprehension provided as a foundation. Even after the program was over, they kept developing a deeper working connection, with infrastructure personnel attending sprint meetings that had previously solely been for the app team.
As an infrastructure team, they also methodically discovered when and why SRE actions are required, which enabled us to evaluate and improve Google’s SRE initiatives that had only been partially executed.
Google team also reiterated how crucial observability is to continuously evaluating and enhancing their present system. They may jointly check metrics at regular meetings between the application and infrastructure teams, which helps to maintain application performance and avert possible problems.
The infrastructure team established a cycle of organisational activity that has gained greater trust by improving upon their prior incomplete SRE operations and including individual projects. They are already incorporating this improved cycle into Google’s initial operational workflows.
Upcoming schedules
The infrastructure team is eager to increase proactive efforts and improve collaboration with application and business teams by leveraging the experience gained from the SRE Core initiative. Google team is now beginning with partnerships on certain applications, but their goal is to leverage these achievements to expand comparable programs throughout the company.
It’s critical to keep in mind that every app has distinct team members, business partners, environments, and cultures; hence, SRE efforts need to be customised for each particular circumstance. With the knowledge that SRE activities are components that serve the goals of the apps and the company, rather than the end goal, hope to integrate and implement the material covered in this program.
Google’s organisation also has a Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) team that works on cross-organizational projects. The CCoE oversees a community platform for developer connections as well as a portal site for information sharing within the organisation. They intend to communicate the knowledge they’ve acquired via these channels to the corresponding teams in each of their group firms. As the CCoE’s internal operations develop, they also hope to impart Google’s expertise and lessons to outside audiences.
With the help of these initiatives, they intend to carry on with their work in the hopes that internal participants outside of the CCoE and infrastructure organisations would take psychological safety into account while debating and acting.
