In this special episode of Cloud Wars Live from Google Cloud Next, Bob Evans speaks with Andi Gutmans about Google Cloud’s newly announced Agentic Data Cloud and what it means for enterprise customers entering the AI-driven future. Gutmans explains how businesses must rethink data platforms for an era where autonomous agents, not just people, need instant access to trusted enterprise knowledge.

The New Data Foundation

The Big Themes:

The Agentic Data Cloud Is a Reinvention: Google Cloud is not simply rebranding its existing Data Cloud, it is fundamentally redesigning it for the agentic AI era. Gutmans explains that data must evolve from being a passive repository into active business knowledge that agents can reason over. He describes this as moving from a “system of intelligence” to a “system of action.” The newly announced Agentic Data Cloud includes innovations across databases, analytics, storage, and governance so agents can securely access and act on enterprise information.
Culture Matters More Than Technology: According to Gutmans, the organizations moving fastest are the ones embracing cultural transformation, not just deploying models on top of old systems. Companies succeeding in the agentic era are rethinking how their data platforms work and how employees engage with AI. Instead of treating agents as copilots, they view every employee as an orchestrator of agents. That mindset shift drives faster ROI because it creates readiness for change and willingness to innovate.
Google’s Vertical Stack Is a Major Advantage: Gutmans says that Google Cloud is uniquely positioned because it owns the entire stack: AI infrastructure, models, and the data platform itself. This allows what he calls “closed-loop innovation” between models and data systems, where improvements in one directly enhance the other. He says many people underestimate how important that relationship is because model reasoning must evolve alongside the platform serving enterprise data. Products like BigQuery, Spanner, and Gemini benefit from Google’s decades of operating at massive scale, including multiple billion-user businesses.

The Big Quote: "We're moving from this reactive, agentic experience to agents truly being autonomous, being able to drive outcomes for the business, and that's also now steering how we're thinking about the data cloud."

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Andi Gutmans on Why Google Cloud’s Agentic Data Cloud Changes Everything | Cloud Wars Live

Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans