While there is an acute awareness of the impact that the companies dominating the Cloud Wars have on global business, many organizations often receive far less attention. These companies have a massive reach and play a pivotal role in the backend operations that power some of the world’s biggest businesses.
One such company is the consultancy NTT DATA. NTT Data is one of the top 10 global IT services providers and, as such, works with 75% of the Fortune Global 100 and close to 85% of the Fortune Global 500. The company has around 195,000 employees in over 50 countries.
So, what happens when the deep expertise of a global solutions provider like NTT DATA meets the innovation engine of a Cloud Wars Top 10 powerhouse? The answer could be just around the corner as NTT DATA partners with Google Cloud to drive generative AI adoption at scale — transforming industries and redefining how organizations across sectors harness the power of AI.
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Massive Reach
“Our partnership with NTT DATA will help enterprises use agentic AI to enhance business processes and solve complex industry challenges,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, President, Global Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud.
“By combining Google Cloud’s AI with NTT DATA’s implementation expertise, we will enable customers to deploy intelligent agents that modernize operations and deliver significant value for their organizations.”
Ultimately, the partnership, which builds on the existing strategic relationship between the two companies, represents a meeting of deep market knowledge with advanced AI and cloud technology. NTT DATA, with its eclectic and highly influential client base, has a profound understanding of customer needs in the cloud modernization and AI spaces. Meanwhile, Google Cloud excels in delivering the tools and services that enable companies undergoing cloud and AI transformation to achieve their goals.
Importantly, the partnership is highly targeted toward co-innovation, meaning Google Cloud’s AI and cloud solutions can be customized for industry-specific use cases that follow NTT DATA’s well-established adoption frameworks. In practice, NTT DATA will leverage Google Cloud technology to create a series of bespoke AI and cloud packages for various sectors, including banking, insurance, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, life sciences, and the public sector.
The core areas of focus include industry-specific agentic AI solutions, AI-driven cloud modernization, next-generation application and security modernization, sovereign cloud innovation, and the Google Distributed Cloud sandbox environment.
Closing Thoughts
This is a very interesting move from Google Cloud because, instead of solely focusing on infrastructure as a yardstick for progress like the hyperscalers traditionally have, this partnership combines cloud and AI technology with consulting services. There is an underlying assumption here: Google Cloud possesses the technology needed to help “75% of the Fortune Global 100” thrive in the era of agentic AI. What’s required now is an implementation partner, and that’s where NTT DATA comes in.
Another key point that stands out to me is the importance of collaborating with a partner like NTT DATA to deliver domain-specific solutions across various industries. Google Cloud already has the technology to address the needs of these sectors, but when it is paired with products developed alongside an implementation partner like NTT DATA — who seems to have taken the lead in this area — you create a powerful and practically new category. This approach doesn’t focus on continuously developing new technologies; instead, it repurposes existing, robust tools and services to meet specific industry needs.
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