Google Cloud Launches AI Agent Partner Program to Boost Development and Adoption

5 Huge Google Cloud Partner Benefits In New AI Agent Program: Kevin Ichhpurani

'We're compensating our reps in giving them quota credit for select [partner] solutions, where our reps will actually take those to market and get compensated just like a Google product,' says Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud's global channel chief. Google Cloud's new AI Agent Partner Program will see Google co-innovate alongside partners, help customers spend their cloud commitments on partner offerings and compensate Google sales reps for selling partner solutions to customers. "The channel has a huge services opportunity here because the game has changed. It's no longer about just lifting and shifting compute, storage and network workloads," said Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud's global channel chief, in an interview with CRN. "Customers are fundamentally looking at how to rethink their business model entirely leveraging AI and data." The $46 billion Mountain View, Calif.-based cloud giant launched its new AI Agent Partner Program this month with new AI agent incentives, product support and co-selling opportunities. [Related: 66Degrees CEO On How Google AI Sales Grew 325%] Ichhpurani is president of Google Cloud's Global Partner Ecosystem. In an interview with CRN, he breaks down five major things every systems integrator, MSP and solution provider should know about Google's new AI Agent Partner Program to drive agentic AI technology. No. 1: Google To Help Customers Spend Cloud Commitments On Partner AI Agent Offerings Google Cloud will actively promote partner AI agent offerings through co-marketing as well as distribution through the Google Cloud Marketplace's new AI Agent Space category. "The Agent Space is where customers can come search and discover the AI agents they want and leverage their Google Cloud commitments that they have to procure those agents to basically decrement those commits as they buy a Google Cloud solution," said Ichhpurani. "They can decrement their Google Cloud commits when they buy eligible solutions." The goal of Google Cloud's AI Agent Space is for customers to easily find, buy and deploy partners' AI agents on Google's online marketplace. "So we're helping the entire life cycle -- from helping you decide how to build an agent to then helping you build the agent to helping promote your agent," he said.

Google Cloud Launches AI Agent Partner Program To Drive GenAI Sales, Customer Growth

'Through this program, we're enhancing the incentives, product support and co-selling opportunities to help our services and ISV partners bring these solutions to market faster, reach more customers and grow their AI agent businesses,' says Google Cloud's global channel chief, Kevin Ichhpurani. Google Cloud is looking to scale AI agent sales and customer adoption to new heights by launching its new Google Cloud AI Agent ecosystem program to help partners build and co-innovate AI agents via new technical and go-to-market resources. "Through this program, we're enhancing the incentives, product support and co-selling opportunities to help our services and ISV partners bring these solutions to market faster, reach more customers and grow their AI agent businesses," said Kevin Ichhpurani, president of Google Cloud's Global Partner Organization, in a blog post Wednesday. In addition, the $46 billion Mountain View, Calif.-based cloud giant launched a new AI Agent Space Wednesday on the Google Cloud Marketplace, with the goal of enabling customers to more easily find and deploy partner-built AI agents. [Related: The 10 Coolest GenAI Products And AI Tools Of 2024] AI agents, also known as agentic AI technology, is one of the fastest-growing AI market segments in the world. By 2028, IT research firm Gartner estimates that at least 15 percent of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from zero percent in 2024. Ben Kessler, CEO of Chicago-based 66degrees, a Google Cloud Premier Partner and top AI solution provider, said his company is seeing "tremendous momentum" around AI agents as customers are leveraging the new technology to drive productivity and revenue. "We've built AI agents for large theme parks that are sitting on Google, which is enhancing the guest experience," said Kessler. "For travel and tourism, we've built the customer experience that before you get to the resort or hotel, you're engaging with a Google AI agent that is extending your experience. "So we're able to push our solutions into the market with the back end of an agent that's built initially with Google technology but uses [66degrees] as the final mile for us to help execute and train the Google model on that client's use case," Kessler said. Three Keys To Google's New AI Agent Partner Program Google Cloud's plan for its new AI Agent partner program is to increase the development and adoption of AI agents by supporting partners in three key areas: accelerated agent development, go-to-market success and increased customer visibility. To drive agent AI development, Google Cloud will provide partners with direct access to products and Google engineering teams for guidance and optimization of their AI agents. "Partners will also receive early access to our latest AI technologies, technical enablement and best practices, and dedicated support for bringing their solutions to market quickly via Google Cloud Marketplace," said Ichhpurani. To help drive go-to-market success, Google Cloud is offering co-selling opportunities and programs specifically designed for AI agent solutions to help partners more effectively promote their offerings and drive adoption across a wider range of customers. Lastly, the new program will highlight innovative work from Google Cloud partners through targeted marketing resources, blogs and dedicated events, with the goal of increasing visibility of partner-built AI agents. Google Cloud's New AI Agent Space Google Cloud's AI Agent Space is a new category inside the company's Google Cloud Marketplace. The goal is for customers to easily find, buy and deploy partners' AI agents on Google's online marketplace. AI Agent Space is available today with solutions from select partners. However, Ichhpurani said Google plans to add "hundreds of additional AI agent" offerings over the coming months. 66degrees CEO: AI Agents Are 'Improving Human Decisions' 66degrees' Kessler believes Google Cloud is striking while the AI agentic market is hot. Agentic AI technology is designed to independently make decisions and take actions to achieve specific goals. Its popularity is gaining due to its ability to take action autonomously to help customers realize their vision for generative AI to increase productivity or create new revenue streams. "If you can actually fine-tune the agent to understand -- and we're working with even large telecommunications customers on this -- if you can train that agent on the customer's data, it can actually have a more fine-tuned and better customer experience than if you or I were actually serving that customer," said Kessler. "Essentially, what [AI agents] do is, it's not taking the human decision out of this -- it's improving human decisions with the correct data." Google Cloud, for its part, hopes the new partner program will be a boon for solution providers looking to win new AI deals and revenue. "We're dedicated to empowering our partners with the tools, resources and support they need to build and deploy successful AI agents," said Ichhpurani (pictured). "We're excited to see the transformative solutions they create and the positive impact they'll have on customers in the coming year."

Google Cloud introduces AI agent ecosystem program - SiliconANGLE

Google LLC today introduced a new ecosystem program designed to help partners build artificial intelligence agents on its cloud platform. The company will also help partners sell the agents they develop. To that end, it's adding a new product section to the Google Cloud Marketplace. AI agents are large language models customized to perform a specific set of tasks. Developers can turn an LLM into an agent by giving it access to a dataset, such as a list of product descriptions, and configuring the model to incorporate the information into its output. Some agents are also equipped with system prompts that customize details such as the style of prompt responses. According to Google Cloud, its new ecosystem program will make it easier for partners to build AI agents on its platform. Companies that sign up will receive access to technical guidance from the search giant's product and engineering teams. Google staffers can, for example, provide pointers on how to optimize an AI agent's performance. The company also plans to offer other technical resources. Google Cloud says that partners will receive dedicated support, best practices and early access to new AI technologies. The latter perk could help participants more quickly develop products that incorporate the cloud platform's latest features. The new ecosystem program also has a go-to-market component. Google will provide "go-to-market programs and co-selling opportunities," Kevin Ichhpurani, the president of Google Cloud's global partner organization, detailed today. Marketing support will be provided in the form of promotional blog posts, events and related resources. Google Cloud is also updating Google Cloud Marketplace as part of the initiative. A newly added section called AI Agent Space now showcases relevant AI products from partners. On launch, AI Agent Space includes more than a dozen offerings. One listing is from Typeface Inc., a venture-backed startup with an AI platform for creating marketing materials. It offers an agent that analyzes customer feedback and past campaigns to find ways of improving a company's promotions. Analytics provider ThoughtSpot Inc., meanwhile, offers a tool called Spotter. It's an AI agent that debuted earlier this month and promises to help the company's customers more quickly scan their business data for useful patterns. Spotter makes it possible to run analyses using natural language prompts. "AI Agent Space is available today with solutions from select partners, and we plan to add hundreds of additional AI agents over the coming months," Ichhpurani detailed. AI agents are also a major focus for Google rival Microsoft Corp. at the Ignite developer event it's hosting this week. On Monday, a Microsoft executive stated that the company has the "largest enterprise AI agent ecosystem." More than 100,000 organizations have used the tech giant's Copilot Studio service to create or edit AI agents. Microsoft debuted several new features for Copilot Studio at Ignite. Most notably, customers can now create agents using the more than 1,800 prepackaged LLMs available in Azure. Microsoft also added enhancements that will make it easier for agents to incorporate data from external sources into their prompt responses. Google Cloud offers its own tool for creating AI agents. Vertex AI Agent Builder debuted in April and enables users to create agents with either code or natural language instructions.

Google Cloud launches AI Agent Space amid rising competition

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More As we've covered here before at VentureBeat, the cloud computing wars have swiftly morphed into the AI wars, with leading cloud computing divisions Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) all rolling out new tools for customers to access, use, deploy, and build atop a range of AI models. Therefore, it was not too surprising to learn his week that Google Cloud was offering a new AI agent ecosystem program called AI Agent Space. This initiative empowers businesses to discover, deploy, and co-create AI agents designed to automate tasks, enhance customer experiences, and optimize operations. With a growing focus on the enterprise, Google's announcement positions it as a major player alongside competitors like Microsoft, SAP, and Salesforce. Google will be promoting the hell out of any agents you build and make available its AI Agent Space Google's ecosystem is built around enabling partners to develop highly customizable AI agents by providing them with robust tools and resources, including early previews of Google's AI technologies, direct support from engineering teams, and best practices to streamline development. In addition, Google says it will promote new agents through its Google Cloud Marketplace to allow partners to scale the agents they make to new, interested audiences. It makes sense and is a win-win for Google, showing that it has a robust catalog of agents for companies to select from and ideally, more users coming to it and Google Cloud as a result. Current agents built by enterprises atop Google AI models and Google Cloud Interestingly, Google chose the announcement of AI Agent Space to highlight other agents built internally by its Google Cloud customers and partners, though these solutions aren't yet, for the most part, available on the AI Agent Space. Presumably, Google wanted to show what is possible with its tools and how businesses could port their internal agents over to the AI Agent Space and sell them as SaaS solutions there. Among them are: Competing Solutions from Microsoft, SAP, and Salesforce Google's announcement came on the heels of similarly positioned AI agent initiatives from rivals including Microsoft with its Copilot Studio, which has emerged as a leader in the AI agent space. More than 100,000 organizations creating or editing AI agents since its launch. At its Ignite conference in November 2024, Microsoft announced major updates, including integration with 1,800 large language models (LLMs) in Azure, offering enterprises unparalleled flexibility, autonomous agents, and multi-agent collaboration through its "agent mesh" architecture. This makes it a strong option for large organizations with complex IT landscapes Meanwhile, SAP recently updated its Joule AI assistant to offer collaborative AI agents designed to break down silos and unify workflows across business functions. Joule's agents work collectively to address challenges such as payment disputes or supply chain disruptions, leveraging SAP's deep integration with ERP, CRM, and HR systems. Furthermor, Salesforce's Agentforce, launched in September 2024, integrates AI agents into its vast ecosystem, leveraging its Data Cloud to enhance service, sales, and marketing functions. While Microsoft and SAP focus on enterprise integration and cross-functional workflows, and Salesforce leans on low-code accessibility, Google stands out for its partner-driven flexibility and open ecosystem. By empowering partners to co-develop agents tailored to specific industries, Google fosters innovation while offering customers a diverse range of solutions. Google's marketplace model ensures that businesses can choose from a variety of pre-built agents or work with partners to create custom solutions. This contrasts with Microsoft's large-scale, infrastructure-driven approach and SAP's process-unifying agents, making Google's ecosystem particularly appealing to organizations with diverse and evolving needs. Yet, in terms of raw numbers, Google's AI Studio remains behind the competition. The Google blog post announcement noted that its AI Agent Space is already live with "solutions from select partners" and the company "plan[s] to add hundreds of additional AI agents over the coming months." But at present, VentureBeat's viewing of the AI Agent Space revealed only 19 distinct agent models available for use, a fry cry from the hundreds or thousands available on cloud rivals' solutions.