Digital transformation has emerged as a defining imperative for organizations navigating the converging pressures of technological acceleration, sustainability mandates, and heightened stakeholder expectations. Across sectors, legacy infrastructures—particularly in retail and service-oriented industries—remain deeply entangled with outdated architectures, fragmented operational practices, and socio-technical rigidities that constrain the realization of Industry 4.0 ambitions. Within this context, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) has gained scholarly and practical relevance as a systematic approach to embedding reliability, resilience, and continuous improvement into complex digital systems. While SRE originated within hyperscale digital-native organizations, its diffusion into legacy environments presents both conceptual challenges and transformative potential. This research article advances an integrative theoretical and interpretive analysis of SRE as a socio-technical enabler of digital transformation, sustainability alignment, and organizational learning in legacy retail and adjacent service infrastructures.

Anchored in contemporary digital transformation scholarship and informed by systems thinking traditions, the study synthesizes insights from information systems research, sustainability studies, and organizational theory to interrogate how SRE practices reconfigure operational logics, governance structures, and human–technology relationships. Particular analytical emphasis is placed on the articulation of reliability as a strategic capability rather than a purely technical attribute, thereby positioning SRE as a mediating construct between Industry 4.0 technologies, such as digital twins and blockchain, and broader organizational objectives related to resilience, equity, and sustainable development. The article builds on recent empirical and conceptual contributions that highlight the complexities of implementing SRE within legacy retail infrastructures characterized by monolithic systems, siloed teams, and historically risk-averse cultures, demonstrating how reliability engineering becomes inseparable from organizational transformation (Dasari, 2025).

Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative, theory-driven interpretive approach grounded in extensive literature integration and comparative conceptual analysis. Rather than producing new empirical datasets, the study generates analytical findings through the systematic interpretation of prior research across domains including digital transformation frameworks, soft systems methodology, stakeholder management, and sustainability governance. The results articulate a set of interrelated patterns through which SRE reshapes legacy infrastructures: the normalization of failure as a learning mechanism, the institutionalization of error budgets as governance tools, and the reframing of operational excellence as a continuous socio-technical negotiation. These patterns are further contextualized within broader debates on digital inclusion, skills development, and ethical data governance.

The discussion extends these findings by critically engaging with alternative scholarly perspectives that caution against the technocratic appropriation of SRE and the potential reproduction of digital divides. By situating SRE within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Industry 4.0 discourse, the article argues that reliability engineering, when reflexively implemented, contributes not only to system stability but also to long-term organizational sustainability and social value creation. The study concludes by outlining theoretical implications for digital transformation research and proposing future research trajectories that empirically examine SRE as a boundary-spanning practice across sectors.

Site Reliability Engineering, Digital Transformation, Legacy Infrastructure, Industry 4.0

Borowski, P. F. (2021). Digitization, digital twins, blockchain, and industry 4.0 as elements of management process in enterprises in the energy sector. Energies, 14(7), 1885.

Benbasat, I., Goldstein, D. K., & Mead, M. (1987). The case research: Strategy in studies of information systems. MIS Quarterly, 11(3), 369–386.

Dasari, H. (2025). Implementing Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) in legacy retail infrastructure. The American Journal of Engineering and Technology, 7(07), 167–179. https://doi.org/10.37547/tajet/Volume07Issue07-16

Chang, J. E., Lai, A. Y., Gupta, A., Nguyen, A. M., Berry, C. A., & Shelley, D. R. (2021). Rapid transition to telehealth and the digital divide: Implications for primary care access and equity in a post‐COVID era. The Milbank Quarterly, 99(2), 340–368.

Baiyere, A., Salmela, H., & Tapanainen, T. (2020). Digital transformation and the new logics of business process management. European Journal of Information Systems, 29(3), 238–259.

Berrone, P., Ricart, J. E., Duch, A. I., Bernardo, V., Salvador, J., Piedra Peña, J., et al. (2019). EASIER: An evaluation model for public–private partnerships contributing to the sustainable development goals. Sustainability, 11(8), 2339.

Balkin, J. M. (2020). The fiduciary model of privacy. Harvard Law Review Forum, 134, 11.

Boonstra, A., & de Vries, J. (2008). Managing stakeholders around inter-organizational systems: A diagnostic approach. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 17(3), 190–201.

Ahmed, R. R., Streimikiene, D., Soomro, R. H., & Streimikis, J. (2022). Digital transformation and industry 4.0 initiatives for market competitiveness: Business integration management model in the healthcare industry. Journal of Competitiveness, 14(4), 6–24.

Brown, N., & Brown, I. (2019). From digital business strategy to digital transformation – How? Proceedings of the ACM SAICSIT Conference, 1–8.

Bordeleau, F.-È., Santa-Eulalia, L. A. D., & Mosconi, E. (2021). Digital transformation framework: Creating sensing, smart, sustainable and social (S4) organisations. Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Bucy, M., Finlayson, A., Kelly, G., & Moye, C. (2016). The “how” of transformation. McKinsey & Company.

Camodeca, R., & Almici, A. (2021). Digital transformation and convergence toward the 2030 agenda’s sustainability development goals: Evidence from Italian listed firms. Sustainability, 13(21).

Carroll, N. (2020). Theorizing on the normalization of digital transformations. Proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Information Systems.

Castro, G., González Fernández, M. C., & Uruburu Colsa, Á. (2021). Unleashing the convergence amid digitalization and sustainability towards pursuing the sustainable development goals (SDGs): A holistic review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 280.

Checkland, P. (1981). Systems thinking, systems practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Checkland, P., & Scholes, J. (1990). Soft systems methodology in action. John Wiley & Sons.

Chatfield, A. T., & Reddick, C. G. (2019). A framework for Internet of Things-enabled smart government: A case of IoT cybersecurity policies and use cases in US federal government. Government Information Quarterly, 36(2), 346–357.

Chattu, V. K. (2021). A review of artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain technology applications in medicine and global health. Big Data and Cognitive Computing, 5(3), 41.

Collins, M. (2021). Ensuring a more equitable future: Addressing skills gaps through multiple, nuanced solutions. Postsecondary Value Commission.

Dayıoğlu, M. A., & Turker, U. (2021). Digital transformation for sustainable future-agriculture 4.0: A review. Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 27(4), 373–399.

Deganis, I., Haghian, P. Z., Tagashira, M., & Alberti, A. (2021). Leveraging digital technologies for social inclusion. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Denoncourt, J. (2020). Companies and UN 2030 sustainable development goal 9 industry, innovation and infrastructure. Journal of Corporate Law Studies, 20(1), 199–235.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Kar, A. K., Baabdullah, A. M., Grover, P., Abbas, R., et al. (2022). Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? International Journal of Information Management, 63, 102456.

Elavarasan, R. M., Pugazhendhi, R., Jamal, T., Dyduch, J., Arif, M. T., Kumar, N. M., et al. (2021). Envisioning the UN Sustainable Development Goals through the lens of energy sustainability in the post-COVID-19 world. Applied Energy, 292, 116665.

Enders, T., Hediger, V., Hieronimus, S., Kirchherr, J. W., Klier, J., & Schubert, J. (2019). Future skills: Six approaches to close the skill gap. World Government Summit.