As cloud adoption accelerates and systems grow more complex, traditional testing and monitoring approaches are no longer a match to preventing outages. Enterprises face increased pressure to ensure system reliability in the face of unpredictable disruptions, from traffic spikes to network outages.
The solution? Chaos engineering—by intentionally injecting faults into a system, chaos engineering helps teams uncover weaknesses before they result in costly downtime estimated at $5,600 per minute, according to Gartner. Another more recent study by Cisco found disruptions can add up to approximately $160 billion globally from just one severe disruption per business per year.
IBM explains the chaos engineering process as “an important defense against infrastructure failures, outages or missing components in an organization’s production environment. It helps site reliability engineers (SREs) and other members of the DevOps team to provide continuous delivery of services by avoiding significant disruptions to their service. Chaos engineering helps them understand their vulnerabilities better and informs how to minimize the impact if a disruption occurs.”
Rohan Gupta, VP cloud, security, and DevOps at R Systems, believes this method is superior to safeguarding network security and systems. It’s a litmus test for creating a safety net for system resilience.
At R Systems, Gupta has spearheaded innovation in cloud and DevOps, fostering cross-team collaboration, along with integrating security measures into all operations to adapt to a rapidly evolving landscape.
R Systems is a leading digital product engineering company that designs and develops chip-to-cloud software products, platforms, and digital experiences that empower clients to achieve higher revenues and operational efficiency. The company combines complex engineering, data, AI, and cloud-native capabilities with deep domain understanding to design and build innovative products for tech, SaaS platforms, and enterprises across industry verticals.
Can you explain what chaos engineering is and its benefits?
Chaos engineering is the practice of intentionally introducing controlled failures into systems to test how they respond under stress. Instead of waiting for real outages, teams simulate them; it’s like pulling out building blocks from a Jenga tower to see if the system wobbles or stands firm.
The benefits are stronger system resilience, faster recovery times, and early discovery of hidden failure points before customers are impacted.
How does chaos engineering help build a culture of preparedness and reliability?
By running chaos experiments, teams normalize the idea that failures are expected, not exceptional. This creates a culture where engineers think proactively about what could potentially break and design systems to handle those scenarios gracefully. Over time, organizations shift from “firefighting” during outages to calmly managing them. This builds trust, both within teams and with customers.
How does R Systems help customers implement chaos engineering?
R Systems guides customers in adopting chaos engineering through structured assessments, tooling integration, cultural readiness programs. From selecting the right chaos platforms (such as LitmusChaos, Gremlin, or Chaos Mesh) to designing tailored failure scenarios, we ensure that experiments align with business priorities.
We have a BRACED (Business Resilience through Advanced Chaos Engineering and DRaaS [Disaster Recovery as a Service]) framework that is specifically designed to evaluate current application and infrastructure stacks and design custom chaos experiments. This allows us to proactively mitigate risk, provide a comprehensive approach to disaster preparedness, and ensure quick recovery and operational continuity.
The focus is on safely introducing chaos in staging or production-like environments, delivering measurable improvements in reliability without risking critical operations.
What do you think the future holds for chaos engineering? How will it evolve?
Chaos engineering will evolve from isolated experiments into continuous reliability testing baked into CI/CD pipelines. With AI and observability advancements, failures will be predicted and automatically simulated at scale, reducing the manual overhead. In the future, chaos engineering won’t just be about resilience, it will become a standard, automated safety net that validates every release before it reaches customers.
Is there anything else you’d like to add about this?
Chaos engineering isn’t about breaking systems, it’s about building confidence. Much like fire drills aren’t meant to burn down buildings but to prepare people, chaos drills train systems and teams to handle the unexpected. For businesses that value reliability, this capability is no longer a “nice-to-have,” it’s becoming essential.