As enterprises look to move AI agents beyond pilot projects, the harder work is connecting them to the data, applications and governance processes that support daily operations. IBM and Google Cloud are answering this call by expanding their partnership and launching a new Google Cloud Practice inside IBM Consulting.
The new practice is focused on AI deployment in hybrid environments and will combine IBM Consulting Advantage, IBM’s internal AI platform for delivery, with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. IBM said the practice will include thousands of Google Cloud-certified consultants and forward-deployed engineers who can help clients design, build and govern enterprise AI agents directly on Google Cloud.
For large organizations, reliable agent deployment is becoming a modernization problem. Agents may be able to execute tasks or coordinate workflows, but they still have to run inside environments shaped by older infrastructure, strict access rules and established IT processes.
“Enterprises are facing one of the most complex modernization cycles in decades,” Mohamad Ali, senior vice president and head of IBM Consulting, said in a release. “By expanding our work with Google Cloud, we’re giving clients a clearer and more reliable path to scale AI across their business, combining deep industry expertise, hybrid‑cloud modernization, and an AI‑first delivery platform.”
That industry expertise is showing up in the agent portfolio IBM plans to bring to the partnership. The idea is to give clients starting points for workflows in regulated and data-heavy sectors, rather than requiring them to build agents from scratch. For that foundation, IBM is creating industry-specific AI agents built on IBM Consulting Advantage and optimized for Gemini Enterprise, covering sectors including banking, government, retail, telecommunications, energy, security, insurance and life sciences.
The Google Cloud side of the partnership centers on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, which Google announced in April as an evolution of Vertex AI. Google described the platform as a way to build, govern and optimize production agents, including agents that can call APIs, access data sources, execute workflows and coordinate with other agents. Gemini Enterprise combines model and agent development tools with orchestration, DevOps and security features, while adding controls for agent memory, identity, access, registries and evaluation.
IBM and Google Cloud are also trying to remove some of the operational friction around where enterprise applications run. Red Hat OpenShift is now available in the Google Cloud Console and Marketplace, which the companies say gives clients a common foundation for managing workloads across cloud and on-prem systems.
IBM and Google Cloud highlighted previous work with modernizing Airbus as an example of their partnership in practice. According to IBM, the companies helped Airbus transition two aerospace businesses into independent operations in under 18 months, updating more than 100 critical systems across engineering, manufacturing, customer service and other regulated functions.
The companies are also planning integrations across more IBM and Google Cloud tools. The new practice brings in BigQuery for data work, watsonx Orchestrate for decision automation and agent intelligence, watsonx.data for enterprise applications, Confluent for real-time data streaming, and automation from HashiCorp and Apptio for monitoring, compliance and performance.
