How Beijing Mobile Achieved Leading SRE Maturity: Insights from a Level‑3 Assessment

With the rapid update of digital technologies, the importance of information systems and their stability has become prominent. The Chinese government’s “Regulations on the Security Protection of Critical Information Infrastructure” (effective Sep 1, 2021) requires operators to ensure safe and stable operation. System Reliability and Continuity Engineering (SRE) is increasingly adopted as a new operations model.

On Oct 26, 2023, the 21st GOPS Global Operations Conference was held in Shanghai, co‑hosted by the Efficient Operations Community and the DevOps Era Community. At the conference, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) announced the latest assessment results of the DevOps series standards.

Beijing Mobile (China Mobile Communications Group Beijing Co., Ltd.) participated in the “Order Center” project, which passed the CAICT’s “R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model – System Reliability and Continuity Engineering (SRE) Level‑3 Stability Assurance” assessment, demonstrating a leading domestic capability.

Beijing Mobile has so far passed two Continuous Delivery assessments, one Technical Operations assessment, and one SRE assessment.

Interview with Tang Xianli, General Manager of the Information Systems Department, Beijing Mobile

Q: Please introduce your company and the project you evaluated.

Tang explained that Beijing Mobile, founded in 1999, serves millions of users and enterprises, and must support major national and international events. Their “Order Center” is a core sub‑system that provides standardized order services to personal, family, enterprise, and IoT customers.

Q: How does achieving the SRE Level‑3 assessment feel?

She expressed gratitude to CAICT and highlighted that the assessment helped improve SLO management, observability, capacity planning, incident and change management, and automation, leading to excitement about future IT operations improvements.

Q: Why is a stable IT system crucial for enterprise development?

She outlined three reasons: (1) protecting customer experience, brand image, and social responsibility; (2) enabling business growth; (3) reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Q: What motivated Beijing Mobile to join the SRE assessment?

The company aims to support national digital transformation, achieve “autonomous controllable” technology, and address the challenges of managing tens of thousands of IT assets with a limited operations team.

Q: What changes did the assessment bring?

Key outcomes include refined SRE team culture, broader SLO coverage, improved observability, reduced mean time to recovery by 54% year‑over‑year, and a 77% drop in incident count.

Q: What challenges were encountered during the assessment?

Challenges involved cultural shifts across highly specialized teams and tool integration across legacy and new technologies.

Q: What best practices can you share for implementing SRE?

She emphasized three points: (1) shifting team mindset from traditional ops to product‑oriented tool development; (2) using agile iteration for rapid tool delivery; (3) focusing on SLOs and observability as transformation levers.

Q: What are the future plans for SRE at Beijing Mobile?

Plans include standardizing the growing portfolio of SRE tools and expanding SRE practices across more departments.

Q: How do you see the future of SRE?

She believes SRE will become essential for any large‑scale IT‑dependent industry, driving cost reduction and efficiency.

The article also provides industry participation statistics, an overview of the DevOps Capability Maturity Model, and contact information for further inquiries.