5 Takeaways from Google Cloud Next & What They Mean for Your Business

Last week, the Beyond team attended Google Next, where we explored firsthand how innovative AI solutions are reshaping customer experiences and driving business transformation. Here are key insights from our team and what they mean for your organization:

Redefining Workflows in the AI Era

The future of AI workflows will revolve around specialized agents performing targeted tasks. At Cloud Next, the concept of connecting multiple agents that can handoff data to each other to complete complex, multi-step tasks was demonstrated in a variety of ways.
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By taking advantage of Google's new Agent Development Kit, Beyond can efficiently build, deploy and manage multi-agent systems through Vertex AI, using pre-trained models from the Agent Garden. These systems can be used for advanced automation of our clients' dynamic workflows, removing the need for manual intervention and human coordination, significantly increasing productivity and improving turnaround times.

Alex Abbott / Director, Technology & Solutions

Human Taste Matters More than Ever in an AI-Driven World

Despite rapid advancements in AI’s ability to generate multi-modal content, there is an enduring truth: human aesthetic judgment is irreplaceable. While AI models are now increasingly adept at understanding vast arrays of data and even producing creative content, the interpretive and visionary element that humans contribute is still crucial.
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Designers and artists who can translate diverse experiences and conceptual insights into clear, actionable briefs are indispensable as AI tools continue to evolve. Empowering the creative teams of the future will mean honing skills in prompt engineering and creative curation, ensuring the human touch continues to refine and elevate the outputs of even the most advanced algorithms.
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Companies stand to benefit most from taking a dual approach: leveraging AI’s efficiency while maintaining a human-centric, creative oversight. This combination will deliver solutions faster while pushing the boundaries of creative excellence.
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Fred McCoy / Senior Engagement Director

The Convergence of AI Tools in Google's Ecosystem

At Google Cloud Next, I witnessed a compelling evolution: real convergence across the Gemini and Workspace ecosystem, with Agentspace emerging as the next logical progression in this integration journey. Until recently, these tools and capabilities existed in separate domains, making enterprise-wide implementation challenging - particularly for administrative mid and back-office agents that can drive substantial business impact.
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Perhaps most promising is how these capabilities are now permeating everyday Workspace tools. From audio overviews and executive summaries in Docs that instantly distill complex information to AI assistance embedded directly within spreadsheet cells, Google is delivering innovations that will meaningfully transform daily workflows for knowledge workers. These thoughtfully designed features address real productivity pain points and represent the first wave of AI that will make a tangible difference in day-to-day operations.
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Companies that embrace this converged ecosystem will unlock new efficiencies while empowering their teams with tools that augment rather than replace human intelligence.
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Daniel Jakeman / Group Delivery Director

AI Charts a New Yellow Brick Road

The opening event at the Sphere, set the tone for Google Cloud Next 2025. When we arrived at the Sphere, I was excited to see the displays that make up the skin of the Sphere up close, but I was more excited to peer inside and see the immersive experience firsthand.
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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, opened by telling us about an ambitious project Google has been working on with Sphere and Warner Bros to transform the movie classic The Wizard of Oz for this unique venue. Think for a minute: The Wizard of Oz was filmed on 35mm film in 1939, at an aspect ratio not even considered widescreen today. It needed to be remastered at 18k, at a super widescreen, and extended over the viewer’s head to be optimised for the Sphere.
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Google Engineers used AI to ‘up-res’ the movie and develop new techniques to ‘in paint’ to add in detail that would be there at the Spheres increased resolution and ‘outpaint’ to generate characters and objects that were no longer visible in shot in the original movie, but would be visible on a sphere-sized screen and aspect ratio. AI was used to add missing elements or characters to create a new immersive experience in this new state-of-the-art format.
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This is a classic example of Google doing something only Google can do: to show the Google magic, make something Googly. This is what sets Google apart from other cloud platforms, their pursuit of the art of possible and putting powerful AI technology in the hands of all of us to change the world.
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The ‘Wizard of Oz’ at the Sphere was a massive win for Google and a brilliant way to start Cloud Next. You can watch the Wizard of Oz in late August when it premieres at the Sphere. Be prepared to be blown away!”
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Matthew Iliffe, CEO

Google’s Agent Ecosystem is Redefining Creative Potential

Google cleverly chose to anchor their big opening event at the Sphere on creativity. The ability to use Generative AI, Veo2 in particular, to expand Wizard of Oz, a classic to which so many are connected, left everybody in awe.
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While Veo2 is being used for the Sphere challenge, Google is the only vendor with specific models to cover all creative modalities:
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Text with Gemini 2.5, Video with Veo2, Images with Imagen3, Audio/Speech creation with Chirp 3 and Music with Lyria. While the image, video and voice examples shown were more polished, the music generation appeared to be less mature. Likely just a matter of time before it gets very impressive.
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Agents are a major leap in solving personal and business challenges, but their creation hasn't always been straightforward. Google’s introduction of AgentSpace simplifies this process, enabling non-technical users to easily create agents and harness powerful tools like GenAI search and NotebookLM. For the technically inclined, the new Agent Development Kit further streamlines the creation of conversational and non-conversational agents.
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Agents reach their full potential when they collaborate and Google’s newly announced Agent2Agent protocol emphasizes capability discovery, task management, collaboration, and user experience negotiation. With backing from over 50 major technology and consulting companies, it’s set to become the standard for orchestrating multi-vendor agents.
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I’m excited to build a multitude of agents that can create and collaborate with the new capabilities announced.”
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Cassiano Surek, CTO

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