NETCONOMY Insights from Google Cloud Next 2026: Agentic AI and the Future of European Business
Google Cloud has long been a cornerstone of our partner landscape at NETCONOMY, so it’s not surprising we had front row seats to Google Cloud Next ‘26 – a crucial event for anyone interested in the Agentic Age.
Our team, including Martin Bachler (COO), Boban Djordjevic (Data & AI Lead), Martin Schreiter (VP Sales), and Maximilian Zollneritsch (Head of Technical Enablement) spent the week exploring the latest advancements and strengthening our ties with the innovators shaping the future of AI.
Here are the impressions and exclusive insights they’ve brought back to Europe.
Europe is Falling Behind on AI
While European businesses are busy debating the “if” and “how” of AI, peers in the US and Asia are confidently taking steps to widen the AI adoption gap.
“The most striking learning was seeing how much further along companies in the US and Asia are,” noted Martin Bachler. “They have moved past experimenting and are putting AI into production at scale. Google is uniquely positioned here because they own the entire stack, from the custom hardware to the application platforms.”
Agentic AI: From Chatbots to Teammates
Boban Djordjevic was particularly pleased with Google’s direction. “We took a bit of a bet early on by choosing Google ADK as our primary agentic framework. This week confirmed it was the right call. Google is now using it internally across almost every product they offer. With their new graph-based approach, it’s now a powerhouse that competes directly with, and in many cases beats, more established frameworks like LangGraph.”
Google’s announcements around the Agentic Data Cloud and Gemini Enterprise mean the tools for building, governing, and scaling these autonomous agents have finally matured. This means we will soon have agents that can orchestrate complex workflows across your entire business.
The SAP x Google Partnership
For NETCONOMY, the deepening partnership between Google and SAP was the highlight of the show. The unveiling of the Blueprint for the Agentic Enterprise has the potential to bring immense value for our clients.
“For me, the 1:1 insights from Google’s global product managers and our customers were invaluable,” said Martin Schreiter. “Whether it’s about driving internal efficiency or creating a better customer experience, the results are outstanding. Seeing how SAP Engagement Cloud is now embedding Gemini AI directly into core business processes shows that we are much closer to the future than we thought.”
Key technical breakthroughs like SAP BDC Connect for BigQuery (the “zero-copy” revolution) mean you can now unify your SAP and non-SAP data without moving massive datasets around. This grounds AI agents in real, trusted data, which is the only way to stop them from hallucinating or making things up.
Why This Matters for You
The message from Las Vegas is clear: The gap is widening. The technology has reached a level of maturity where “wait and see” is becoming an expensive strategy for European business leaders.
The combination of Google’s AI infrastructure and SAP’s business logic provides a foundation that is innovative, stable, and sovereign. “Gemini Enterprise is becoming so feature-rich that it’s ready to boost internal productivity immediately,” Boban added.
If you’re still wondering where to start, download our Agentic AI Readiness Checklist. It’s a straightforward self-assessment tool designed for business leaders to evaluate whether their current data and technology landscape is prepared for this next generation of AI and provides clear steps on how to close the gap and start moving your AI projects from experiment to execution.
