“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.”
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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.”