IBM and Google Cloud Announce Strategic Collaboration to Accelerate Enterprise AI Adoption by Combining Human Expertise with AI-Powered Delivery

Expanding the AI-powered delivery platform IBM Consulting Advantage to offer industry-specific agents optimized for Gemini Enterprise

Launching a new global Google Cloud practice with thousands of IBM consultants to accelerate enterprise AI adoption and modernize core systems

This practice represents a multi-billion-dollar opportunity within Google Cloud Services

[Sunnyvale, California, USA – June 4, 2026 (local time)]

IBM and Google Cloud today announced the launch of a new Google Cloud practice designed to help enterprises deploy AI into production faster and modernize core systems. The practice combines IBM’s deep industry expertise and its AI-driven platform, IBM Consulting Advantage—used by IBM teams to rapidly design, build, and deploy AI solutions using agents and industry workflows—with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, cybersecurity, and data capabilities.

Thousands of Google Cloud-certified IBM consultants and customer-facing engineers (FDEs, Forward Deployed Engineers) will support enterprises in adopting AI solutions, modernizing legacy environments, and managing technology across complex hybrid environments. This represents a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for both IBM and Google Cloud, enabling each to bring their unique strengths to joint clients.

IBM is building a portfolio of industry-specific AI agents on IBM Consulting Advantage, optimized and deployed for Gemini Enterprise. These agents address use cases in banking, government, retail, telecommunications, energy, security, insurance, and life sciences, helping automate workflows, enhance decision-making, and accelerate autonomous operations powered by Gemini models.

Through this new collaboration, IBM consultants will be able to directly design, build, and manage enterprise AI agents on Google Cloud. IBM’s pre-built assets, reusable agents, and proven transformation methodologies can now be combined with Google Cloud’s agent runtime environment, governance controls, and enterprise-grade security features, enabling faster and more consistent delivery from design to deployment.

Mohamad Ali, Senior Vice President and Head of Consulting at IBM, said: "Enterprises are facing the most complex modernization challenges in decades. By expanding our collaboration with Google Cloud, we provide clients with a clearer, more reliable path to scale AI across their business. This combines deep industry expertise, hybrid cloud modernization, and an AI-driven delivery platform."

Kevin Ichhpurani, President of Global Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud, said: "This collaboration significantly expands the pool of Google Cloud specialist consultants in the market, helping meet surging AI demand. By combining Google’s agent-based infrastructure with IBM’s deep industry expertise and proven delivery frameworks, we help our joint customers move beyond proof-of-concepts and deploy and manage production-grade AI agents across their cloud environments."

IBM Consulting will support the development of common interface patterns and solutions to connect enterprise data to Gemini, using an open and flexible approach that integrates IBM and ecosystem technologies. These interfaces can be tailored to each client’s architecture, making it easier to integrate data across the organization and scale Gemini-based AI capabilities.

The practice will focus on the following key areas:

Production-Ready AI and Data: Combining IBM’s industry knowledge and AI assets with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and BigQuery to help build foundational capabilities for advanced AI systems that go beyond proof-of-concepts (PoCs) and operate in production.

Industry-Specific Solutions: Delivering AI and data capabilities for sectors such as aerospace, financial services, government, healthcare, and telecommunications. Leveraging Confluent for real-time data streaming and governance, enabling AI systems to optimize operations, predict risks, and deliver outcomes compliant with industry regulations.

Modernizing Cybersecurity Operations: Delivering AI-driven defense and security capabilities to strengthen response capabilities and enable faster incident response.

Hybrid Cloud Modernization: Supporting the modernization of critical workloads across on-premises and cloud environments. Designed for highly regulated industries, with Red Hat OpenShift available directly from the Google Cloud Console.

Enhancing AI-Driven Workflows: Integrating Gemini with watsonx Orchestrate to automate decision-making and enhance agent capabilities, while connecting with watsonx.data to generate insights more flexibly and enable advanced applications.

Operational Resilience and Governance: Combining IBM’s automation technologies powered by HashiCorp and Apptio with Google Cloud’s AI to improve monitoring, compliance, and performance.

Statements regarding future direction or intent of IBM and Google Cloud are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and are intended to outline goals and objectives only.

This document is based on a press release issued by IBM Corporation on June 4, 2026 (local time). For the original, please visit the source.

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