Google Cloud’s Five Big New Agentic AI Innovations And Go-To-Market Strategy For Partners

From Google Cloud’s sales team taking mandatory training on co-selling with partners to Google launching a new Agent2Agent open protocol and pushing partners to sell each other’s AI agents: Here are five significant initiatives underway at Google that every channel partner needs to know about.

“We are the undisputed leader in terms of AI,” said Google Cloud’s global channel chief, Kevin Ichhpurani, as the $48 billion company launches a slew of new agentic AI innovations and channel enablement initiatives.

From partners stitching together other solution providers’ AI agents to create a true agentic environment for customers to Google Cloud’s new Agent2Agent open protocol—Google Cloud is putting a full-court press on AI agent development and implementation for its army of partners.

“Customers are concerned about the spaghetti nightmare that’s going to get created with all of these AI agents,” Ichhpurani (pictured), president of Google Cloud’s global partner ecosystem, told CRN. “Everybody’s got their own agent. Salesforce has Agentforce. SAP has Joule. Workday has their agents. In many ways, all these agents need to communicate.”

[Related: Google Cloud Next: The 10 Biggest Google Product Launches]

Google Cloud saw this “huge problem” around agentic AI interoperability so the Mountain View, Calif.-based company built new “agent-to-agent interoperability” technology via its Agent2Agent protocol, he said.

Google Cloud’s new Agent2Agent protocol enables AI agents to communicate with each other, securely exchange information and coordinate actions across various platforms or services like Atlassian, Box, Cohere, Intuit, LangChain, MongoDB, PayPal, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, UKG and Workday.

In an interview with CRN, Ichhpurani takes a deep dive into how Google partners can leverage Agent2Agent protocol today, how reselling Google AI solutions isn’t going away, and why partners should be leveraging and selling other partners’ AI agents.

“Some of the systems integrators are taking four or five other partner agents to stitch it together for a customer,” he said. “So it’s not just what they are building, but what other partners are building as well.”

Ichhpurani outlined five key new AI innovations recently launched by Google Cloud that every systems integrator, MSP, reseller, consultant and AI service provider should know. Here is what he told CRN.

New Agent2Agent Protocol

“Customers are concerned about the spaghetti nightmare that’s going to get created with all of these agents. Everybody’s got their agent. Salesforce has Agentforce. SAP has Joule. Workday has their agents. In many ways, all these agents need to communicate. That’s the reason ERP came together three decades ago.

“A perfect example: an agent that does commerce selling products to you. It sure needs to talk to the agent that handles supply chain, [asking], ‘Do I even have the inventory in stock?’

“So these agents all need to be able to interoperate. We see that as a huge problem in the industry, and we’re pioneering the agent-to-agent interoperability through our protocol.

“It now has over 60 partners that we’re working with. Companies like Intuit, Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow as well as Accenture, Deloitte—major GSIs—in order to hone and deliver this protocol in the market.”

How Google Cloud Is Enabling Partners

“No. 1, we’re helping them understand the demand signals. So based on what research we’re pulling up from our customers, we’re going to share that with partners. Like, ‘Hey, we see that in health care, clinical documentation is a huge agentic opportunity. Within insurance, an automated claims adjuster is a huge X billions of opportunity.’

“So we’re sharing demand signals with partners, like these are the areas you should go build. We obviously give you Agentspace and the developer frameworks for you to build these agents. We’re providing technical support to not only enable the partners, but to actually co-innovate and help them build these agentic experiences for customers.

“We give you the protocol to ensure that all of these agents can talk to each other.”

Click through to read the other four new AI innovations for Google Cloud partners.

Partners Can, And Should Be, Selling Other Partners’ AI Agents

Agentspace allows you to build agents and deploy these agents at scale. The developer community can build these agents. Customers can build these agents.

Systems integrators can stitch all of this together.

Some of the systems integrators are taking four or five other partner agents to stitch it together for a customer. So it’s not just what they are building, but what other partners are building as well. That’s all through the Google Cloud Marketplace that can stitch all of this together.

Resellers can resell everything that’s on the Marketplace as well.

So they could basically go to a customer and say, ‘I’ll resell these five agents that are from five different partners.’ Google has a protocol to connect all of these agents.

So you need a supply side agent, a demand side agent, a commerce agent, etc. They’re going be connected like Lego blocks, and ‘I’ll sell it to you to the Marketplace, all in one piece of paper, and I’ll integrate it for you.’ They’re delivering an agentic experience with five or 10 different agents to a client made by different partners.

Google Cloud Sales Team Doing Training On Partner Co-sell And Servies Registration

Our entire sales team across the globe is going through mandatory training on co-sell and services [registration]. They’re excited about it.

They’re like, ‘I can now see who’s doing what and have access to data on the value that partners are bringing to my customers.’ There are times when we’re just not seeing absolutely everything, and we can now even get better aligned.

Probably the biggest message that we’re delivering to our partners that’s really resonating, other than obviously our AI story, is the fact that we want to bring partner services into an opportunity earlier to position themselves.

We know that, although our technology is amazing, someone has to help get it in place, integrate it, migrate it,and really make sure that we’re getting to that outcome basis.

So we’re working on bringing in the partners’ statements of work early, understanding who’s doing what and positioning that earlier in the sales cycle.

New AI Agent Marketplace

We launched a new dedicated section within the [Google Cloud] Marketplace called the AI Agent Marketplace where customers can find, purchase, deploy and manage AI agents.

We’re working on on-boarding more and more agents to our Marketplace every day. We have thousands of agents now since the end of last year now leveraging Google AI.

Partners are just loving the fact that they can create an agent specifically foran industry and then monetize it on the Marketplace.

Then, frankly, have a customer shop for the fact that they have expertise in a very particular problem. Part of the time the customers are buying the agents and part of the time they’re just seeing the expertise the partner has and that also is driving leads and customized work to the partner as well.

Google Cloud’s Resale Strategy

We’re doubling down on resell, but in certain segments.

So in the corporate segment, emerging markets—where we don’t have feet on the street—and public sector, we’re really doubling down on reselling in those markets.

But in the enterprise, we’re moving more to a co-sell motion.

Even in the enterprise segment, if we’re not reselling, we’re still selling together. And we still need partners in that sales process.

So this is a system that gives our partners a way to communicate directly with our field organization. ‘Hey, I am in this customer too. I am doing a proof of concept to this particular buyer on this particular topic. I am doing a workshop here, and this is what it looks like.’

So our field knows, from a data perspective, who’s doing what, and who’s opening doors from an executive perspective within the account that they’re covering.

And it will keep that data. So if we change reps, which happens within companies, there’ll be a great ability for that rep to walk into that account and see exactly who’s done what over the history of that relationship with that customer.