The editor of the Handbook of Performability Engineering, Dr. Krishna B. Misra, a retired eminent professor of the Indian Institute of Technology, took to reliability nearly four decades ago and is a renowned scholar of reliability. Professor Misra was awarded a plaque by the IEEE Reliability Society in 1995 “in recognition of his meritorious and outstanding contributions to reliability engineering and furthering of reliability engineering education and development in India”. Upon his retirement in 2005 from IIT, Kharagpur, where he established the first ever postgraduate course on reliability engineering in India in 1982, and Reliability Engineering Centre in 1983, he launched the International Journal of Performability Engineering in 2005 and has since led the journal as its inaugural Editor-in-Chief. Two years after successfully establishing the International Journal of Performability Engineering, Prof. Misra has now taken up the responsibility of editing the Handbook of Performability Engineering, which is being published by Springer. The timely publication of this handbook necessarily reflects the changing scenario of the 21st century’s holistic view of designing, producing and using products, systems, or services which satisfy the performance requirements of a customer to the best possible extent.