Written by Dr. Kareem Yusuf | Senior Vice President, Ecosystem, Strategic Partners and Initiatives, IBM
April 23, 2026
Across the industry, we hear a consistent message: Enterprise organizations need to modernize core systems, operationalize AI, and run workloads across multiple clouds without increasing complexity. Many want hybrid flexibility, predictable operations, and trusted AI, but unifying platforms, models, and tools across cloud providers remains a major challenge.
This is where the collaboration between IBM and Google Cloud can provide real value. By combining our companies’ AI capabilities, Google Cloud’s strengths in developer-centric design and IBM’s strengths in hybrid cloud, data management, and automation, we can help clients build a more integrated and flexible foundation for their AI and cloud strategies. This effort is based on what our clients need: interoperability, choice, and confidence that their systems can safely scale.
This creates a more open, secure, and flexible foundation for hybrid cloud and AI transformation, rather than forcing a single path. It also aims to enable clients to easily connect data, models, infrastructure, and operations across environments. This is a clearer, more practical approach to modernizing systems and deploying AI at scale.
The features currently available are:
- IBM watsonx.data now available on Google Cloud Marketplace, enabling enterprises to manage real-time, unstructured, multimodal data for AI at scale.
- Hashi Corporation Terraform Enterprise, Vault, and Consul These are available on Google Cloud Marketplace and enable clients to secure, automate, and orchestrate cloud services and workloads.
- confluence cloudis a fully managed Apache Kafka service available on Google Cloud Marketplace that allows customers to build next-generation data architectures using real-time, contextual data.
- red hat open shiftIncludes Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, now accessible directly from the Google Cloud Console and available on the Google Cloud Marketplace. This simplifies onboarding, unifies billing, and enables you to apply Google Cloud’s committed spend for customers using both virtual machines (VMs) and containers. Our engineering team has validated Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Google Cloud scale, providing customers with a stable hybrid foundation for modern workloads.
- Red Hat Lightspeed agent for Google Cloud Improve developer productivity across environments and complement ongoing collaboration in infrastructure automation management.
Looking ahead, here are areas where clients can continue to benefit.
- Evolution of enterprise AI
IBM and Google Cloud are committed to integrating Google’s AI solutions, including Gemini Models and Gemini Enterprise, with key areas of IBM’s software solutions portfolio to bring the best of both companies to our joint customers. - Making it easier for companies to scale
Together, IBM and Google are working to further reduce operational complexity for clients by natively integrating HashiCorp Terraform within Google Cloud Infrastructure Manager to automate, standardize, and securely manage their infrastructure. - IBM products on Google Cloud
Some IBM products and services are designed for Google Cloud and are made available through the Google Cloud Marketplace to help you get the most out of your promised cloud dollars.
At the heart of all this is the simple truth that enterprises need to run AI, automation, and mission-critical workloads across multiple environments while maintaining security, consistency, and a smooth operational experience. No single vendor can solve this problem alone.
By combining IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI platform, Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure and modeling capabilities, and Red Hat’s cloud-native foundation, we can remove the friction that slows AI adoption and multicloud modernization by providing clients with a clear path to the impact they are ultimately trying to achieve.
