A Field Guide for Reliability Consultants: Finding Companies with Incident and On-Call Records

As a reliability consultant, your expertise lies in understanding systems, operations, and the critical data generated from them. This puts you in a unique position to identify companies whose incident and on-call records could be incredibly valuable for AI labs and data buyers through SourceX.

This guide outlines how you can leverage your professional insights to find and refer suitable companies, contributing to cutting-edge AI development while earning rewards.

Why Incident and On-Call Data is Valuable

Incident and on-call records contain a wealth of information about how systems fail, how teams respond, and the resolutions implemented. This structured and unstructured data is essential for training AI models that predict outages, optimize resource allocation, and improve system resilience across various industries. SourceX facilitates the secure and ethical licensing of this data, ensuring companies are compensated for their valuable operational insights.

The Ideal Company Profile

When looking for potential referrals, focus on companies that meet SourceX's baseline criteria:

• US Companies: We are currently focused on organizations based in the United States.
• Established Operations: Look for companies with a history of operating records, indicating a robust dataset over time.
• Size Matters: Target companies with 50+ full-time employees at their peak. This often correlates with a larger, more complex operational footprint and, consequently, more substantial incident data.
• Data Rights: The company must have the clear rights to license its data.
• Authorized Sponsor: There needs to be an authorized sponsor within the company who can champion the licensing initiative.

Targeting Incident and On-Call Data Specifically

Beyond the general baseline, hone in on indicators that suggest rich incident and on-call data:

• Complex Systems: Companies managing large-scale, distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or critical services are prime candidates. Think about the types of organizations you've consulted with that face regular, complex operational challenges.
• DevOps/SRE Culture: Organizations with mature DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices often have well-documented incident management processes and tools, leading to higher quality and quantity of incident data.
• High Availability Needs: Industries where downtime is extremely costly (e.g., e-commerce, financial services, SaaS providers, telecommunications) are likely to have robust incident response logs.
• Tooling in Use: Companies using established incident management platforms (e.g., PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps, ServiceNow, Jira Service Management) or extensive internal ticketing systems are likely to have structured records.

Your Unique Advantage as a Reliability Consultant

Your daily work involves understanding the operational challenges of companies. You're already speaking their language and recognizing their pain points. This makes you a trusted advisor, not just a referrer.

• Network Insights: Your professional network is invaluable. Think about past clients, colleagues, and industry contacts who fit the profile. Which companies have you seen grappling with system stability or performance issues?
• Industry Knowledge: You know which sectors generate significant operational data. Financial tech, health tech, logistics, and large-scale digital services are often excellent sources.
• Value Proposition: You can articulate the value of their operational data in a way that resonates with engineering leaders and executives because you understand the challenges they face.

What to Share and How to Refer

When you identify a potential company, introduce them to SourceX. You don't need to dive into technical details of their data or even ask for specific data samples. Your role is simply to make the introduction.

Key points to convey:

• SourceX helps companies license their valuable operational data (like incident and on-call records) to AI labs and data buyers.
• This provides a new revenue stream for their existing data assets.
• SourceX handles the entire licensing process, from rights review to delivery and payment. The company retains full control and ownership.
• Partners like you never handle company data.

Remember, anyone can join the SourceX partner program from any supported country. The reward for your successful referral is 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX collects, capped at $100,000 per referred company. Rewards become payable only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee; a lead or meeting alone does not trigger payment.

By helping companies monetize their operational data, you're not only contributing to the advancement of AI but also unlocking new value for businesses. Your expertise is the key to connecting these opportunities.

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Refer a company · How rewards work