It's as much "the next big thing" as "Cloud" has been since 2006 or so: as basic a valid option to organize for substantial scale operations as for the past 15

It's as much "the next big thing" as "Cloud" has been since 2006 or so: as basic a valid option to organize for substantial scale operations as for the past 15 years. "SRE" may be a Google-initiated label, the practices behind predate it (first sight I've seen was Flickr in 2008).