{"id":74409,"date":"2026-06-22T07:07:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T23:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=74409"},"modified":"2026-06-14T15:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T07:10:17","slug":"ibm-and-google-cloud-announce-partnership-to-scale-ai-with-human-expertise-ai-powered-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2026\/06\/22\/ibm-and-google-cloud-announce-partnership-to-scale-ai-with-human-expertise-ai-powered-delivery\/","title":{"rendered":"IBM and Google Cloud announce partnership to scale AI with human expertise, AI\u2011powered delivery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibm.com\/investor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">IBM<\/a> and Google Cloud announced the launch of a new Google Cloud Practice, designed to help organizations more quickly scale AI into production and modernize core systems. The new practice combines IBM\u2019s deep industry expertise and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibm.com\/consulting\/advantage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">IBM Consulting Advantage<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the company\u2019s AI-powered platform that helps IBM teams design, build and deploy AI solutions faster using agents and industry workflows \u2013 now with Google Cloud\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cloud.google.com\/blog\/products\/ai-machine-learning\/introducing-gemini-enterprise-agent-platform\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform<\/a>, cybersecurity and data capabilities.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With thousands of Google Cloud-certified IBM consultants and forward-deployed engineers, the practice will help enterprises deploy AI solutions, modernize legacy environments, and manage technology across complex hybrid landscapes. This represents a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for IBM and Google Cloud, with each bringing unique strengths that matter to clients.<\/p>\n<p>IBM is creating a portfolio of industry-specific\u2011 AI agents built on IBM Consulting Advantage and optimized for Gemini Enterprise. These agents support use cases for banking, government, retail, telecommunications, energy, security, insurance, and life sciences, helping organizations automate workflows, improve decision-making, and accelerate autonomous operations powered by Gemini models.<\/p>\n<p>With the new partnership, IBM consultants can now design, build, and govern enterprise\u2011grade AI agents directly on Google Cloud. Pre\u2011built assets, reusable agents, and proven transformation methods from IBM can be combined with Google Cloud\u2019s agent runtime, governance controls, and enterprise safety features, helping organizations move from design to deployment with enhanced speed and consistency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEnterprises are facing one of the most complex modernization cycles in decades,\u201d said\u00a0Mohamad Ali, Senior Vice President and Head of IBM Consulting. \u201cBy expanding our work with Google Cloud, we\u2019re giving clients a clearer and more reliable path to scale AI across their business, combining deep industry expertise, hybrid\u2011cloud modernization, and an AI\u2011first delivery platform.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis partnership significantly expands the pool of expert Google Cloud consultants in the market to meet surging demand for AI,\u201d said\u00a0Kevin Ichhpurani, President, Global Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud. \u201cBy combining Google\u2019s agentic infrastructure with IBM\u2019s deep industry expertise and proven delivery frameworks, we are ensuring joint customers can move beyond pilots to deploy and govern production-grade AI agents across their entire cloud environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>IBM Consulting will help develop common interface patterns and solutions that connect enterprise data into Gemini using an open and flexible approach by integrating technology from IBM and its ecosystem. These interfaces can be tailored for each client\u2019s architecture, helping organizations unify their data while more easily scaling Gemini\u2011based AI capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>The practice focuses on several priority areas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Production-ready AI and data:\u00a0<\/strong>Helping clients build foundations that support real, skilled AI systems, rather than pilots, by combining IBM\u2019s industry knowledge and AI assets with Google Cloud\u2019s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and BigQuery.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Industry<\/strong><strong>\u2011<\/strong><strong>specific solutions:<\/strong>\u00a0Delivering AI and data capabilities for sectors such as aerospace, financial services, government, healthcare, and telecommunications. This includes Confluent to stream and govern real\u2011time data so AI systems can optimize operations, anticipate risk, and deliver outcomes tailored to each industry\u2019s regulatory demands.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Modernizing cybersecurity operations:<\/strong>\u00a0Providing AI\u2011driven defense and security capabilities intended to strengthen readiness and accelerate response.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hybrid cloud modernization:<\/strong>\u00a0Updating critical workloads across on\u2011premises and cloud environments, including for highly regulated industries. Red Hat OpenShift is now available directly in the Google Cloud Console.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Enhanced AI\u2011powered workflows:\u00a0<\/strong>Integrating Gemini with watsonx Orchestrate to improve decision automation and agent intelligence, and into\u00a0watsonx.data\u00a0to give clients more flexible ways to generate insights to support smarter applications.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Operational resilience and governance:<\/strong>\u00a0Using IBM automation, supported by HashiCorp and Apptio, with Google Cloud AI to support improved monitoring, compliance, and performance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new practice combines IBM\u2019s deep industry expertise and IBM Consulting Advantage\u00a0\u2013 the company\u2019s AI-powered platform that helps IBM teams design, build and deploy AI solutions faster using agents and industry workflows \u2013 now with Google Cloud\u2019s\u00a0Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, cybersecurity and data capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":74410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[853,107,7569,8120,214],"class_list":["post-74409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cloud","tag-google-cloud","tag-google-cloud-practice","tag-ibm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74411,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74409\/revisions\/74411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}