Google Cloud All-in w/Ecosystem for Agentic Transformation as Others Launch Deployment Co.'s

**Bob Evans** (0:00)
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. Crazy new trend here in 2026 has been the AI deployment or Agenic deployment, Agenic transformation, the connection to this remarkable technology that all these AI companies have been pumping out with the business, desired business goals that business leaders are demanding. You see a couple of different approaches emerging here. The five big companies, AI companies leading the way on this, there's Google Cloud, Microsoft, AWS, OpenAI and Anthropic.
The only one of those that is going with an exclusively partner ecosystem led approach for these AI deployments is Google Cloud. I've talked recently about what all five are doing. I wanted to zero in here a little bit today on what makes Google Cloud's unique approach stand out from the others. I think the big thing is they are going 100% with their ecosystem partners for these AI deployments for what Google Cloud calls a genetic transformation. Whereas the others are all including some partners, but each of the other four, AWS, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are also launching their own company owned deployment companies with their own employees out playing huge roles in these deployment initiatives. So this is a major point of differentiation here from Google Cloud. They've said since early in Thomas Currian's tenure here, starting seven years ago, they want to be very heavily dependent on the ecosystem. Excuse me, I get all choked up talking about ecosystems.
And their president of global ecosystems, Kevin Ichhpurani, has been a very, very successful in his efforts there. He's also been a staunch supporter of this. He says, we're a technology company. We're really good at doing the technology. We want to surround ourselves with force-multiplying partners who are really good at the deployment. And Google Cloud will be connected with them in some ways. They'll offer their expertise and help with the projects. They're going to be led primarily by the initiatives driven by these partner ecosystems. So a huge point of differentiation there where Google Cloud stands apart from the others.
A couple of the other things here in our Google Cloud, and in a detailed article that I'll have later this morning on cloudwars.com, I offer a lot of examples of this, some slides from a recent Google Cloud presentation about this. They're very ambitious and aggressive in how they're training their ecosystems right there, such as for deployed engineering, industry-specific needs, business functions that are changing rapidly, business processes that are changing, and change management. Now, if you look at the one of the reasons why Google Cloud is doing this and the success it's put into its ecosystem for 2025, some of these numbers of what the partner related revenue did for the company. So this is for 2025 versus 2024
Partner driven revenue was up 80 percent. Bookings driven by partners were up 100 percent, so they doubled and the sale of partner created solutions on the Google Cloud Marketplace were up 90 percent. Now, that again is for 2025 over 2024 So as high growth as Google Cloud was in 2025, they're moving and growing and expanding at even more blistering pace here in 2026 So we could expect reasonably that all these numbers could go up or remain at least as strong as the market gets bigger.
Finally, I just want to be sure to point out that Google Cloud President of Global Ecosystems, Kevin Ichhpurani, I mentioned him a minute ago. He said, and I give a great example of this from Verizon, in the article we'll have here today, the goal is not just to use AI to take out costs, it's to take out costs and to drive increased revenue growth. So it's a very powerful combination.
There's a huge market here. There's going to be room for lots of different approaches. I do think it's interesting though, if we look at this, we've got to split those five companies up into two groups. OpenAI and Anthropic over here, we're going to say because they're relatively new companies and certainly new to the enterprise space. So they haven't built up the global ecosystems and capabilities and experience the others have. But if we look at AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud, Google Cloud has said, hey, what we've been doing so far has been working really well. We're going to double down on that with lots of training and incentives for our partners. Whereas AWS and Microsoft say, you know what, we're going to keep working with partners. In some ways, we need to build our own capabilities and expertise to move into this. So two different approaches. I'm sure there'll be lots of success all around. But I do think it's interesting and indicative of why Google Cloud is number one on the Cloud Wars Top 10 They are taking a different road on this, different approach. Thanks for being with us here at Cloud Wars Minute. You have a fantastic day.