How Google Cloud monitors its Quality Management System

As a provider of software and services for global enterprises, Google Cloud understands that the quality and security of products is instrumental in maintaining trust among our customers. We are committed to providing products and services that help our customers meet their quality management objectives, ultimately helping organizations to meet their regulatory and customer requirements. At the heart of this commitment is our robust quality management system (QMS), a process-based approach that aims to achieve high standards of quality in all stages of the product or service lifecycle and which leverages our ISO 9001:2015 certification.

In our new Quality Management System paper, we share the quality management principles and practices we follow that help us establish a defined and consistent process to continually monitor, manage, and improve the quality of our products and services. As with ISO 9001, Google Cloud’s QMS is predicated on seven quality management principles. These principles include: 

1. Customer focus: Through feedback collected from our customers, we have noted that they value security, speed, reliability, and productivity. At Google, we believe this is achieved by following defined practices for effective software development processes and customer communications. Therefore, Google focuses on Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and Cloud Platform Support (CPS) as key components of our QMS.

2. Leadership: Google’s quality policy is the foundation of its quality management program and is managed by Google's Vice President of Security Engineering. The policy commits to controlling and maintaining the quality of Google Cloud products and related software development processes, limiting Google's exposure to the risks arising from product quality issues, promoting continual improvement, and maintaining compliance with customer, legal and regulatory requirements.

3. Engaging with people: We believe that for an effective and efficient QMS, it is important to involve people with diverse perspectives and different backgrounds, including our customers and our employees, and to respect and support them as individuals through recognition, empowerment, and learning opportunities. Google involves them from the first stage of the QMS context setting by gathering their requirements and feedback. 

4. Process approach: Google Cloud’s QMS uses the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) approach to process planning. We have defined four key process groups to achieve our quality management objectives, which are: Leadership and planning processes, Operational processes for software design and development, Evaluation and monitoring processes, and Improvement processes. By managing the inputs, activities, controls, outputs, and interfaces of these processes, we can establish and maintain system effectiveness.

5. Improvement: Our proactive approach to quality management can help improve quality and expand business opportunities, enabling entire organizations to optimize operations and enhance performance. 

6. Evidence-based decision making: To help align our QMS with our business strategy, we collate and analyze pertinent information from internal and external sources to determine the potential impact on our context and subsequent strategy. 

7. Relationship management: Google directly conducts the data processing activities that are behind providing our services. However, we may engage some third-party suppliers to provide services related to customer and technical support. In such cases, our vendor onboarding processes (which includes consideration of the vendor’s requirements of Google) can facilitate streamlined supply chain integration.

In a highly competitive, rapidly changing, and increasingly regulated environment, where quality is an integral part of top management agenda, Google holds its products and services to the highest standards of quality, enabling customers to transform their business through quality and become the quality leaders of tomorrow. You can learn more about Google Cloud’s quality management system by downloading the whitepaper.