Google Cloud Next 2025 | Azi Handley & Ismail Amla, Kyndryl

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Ismail Amla

SVP, Kyndryl Consult

Kyndryl

Azi Handley

VP, Google Global Strategic Alliances

Kyndryl

play_circle_outline Kyndryl's partnership with Google focusing on AI business growth and large GSIs

play_circle_outline Importance of collaboration and ecosystem in competitive landscape

play_circle_outline Ecosystem evolution and partnership maturity with Google

play_circle_outline Upskilling and cultural transformation for deploying new tools and systems

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Azi Handley & Ismail Amla, Kyndryl

Ismail Amla

SVP, Kyndryl Consult Kyndryl

Azi Handley

VP, Google Global Strategic Alliances Kyndryl

Exploring Kyndryl's Advancements at Google Cloud Next 2025

In this engaging episode from theCUBE, Ismail Amla and Azi Handley of Kyndryl join Savannah Peterson to discuss the company's strategic advancements at Google Cloud Next 2025 in Las Vegas. The conversation unfolds as they share insights on Kyndryl's expanding partnerships and innovations, particularly in the AI sector, highlighting significant milestones such as their notable presence in the UK market.

Ismail Amla, the UK and Ireland market leader at Kyndryl, elaborates on the compan... Read more

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What has been the progression of the partnership between Google and the speaker's company over the past three years? add

What is the impact of collaboration on job security in relation to advancements in AI technology? add

What has been the evolution of the ecosystem and how has the partnership with Google matured since last year's Google Cloud Next event? add

What challenges did the CIO in Chile face when trying to modernize his company and introduce AI technology to his team? add

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Azi Handley & Ismail Amla, Kyndryl

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good evening Cloud community and welcome back to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. We're here at the end of day one of our three days of coverage at Google Cloud. Next, my name is Savannah Peterson. Very excited to be bringing this closing segment with Kyndryl to you. Azzy and Ismael. Thank you so much for being here with me tonight.

>> Great to be here. Thank you for having us.

Savannah Peterson

>> So exciting. This is becoming a tradition at multiple tech conferences. We had Paul on with us just at MWC earlier this, well just a month ago in Barcelona. I've had Barry on the show last Google Cloud Next, but when you two walked up, you said that you were going to be even cooler.

>> Obviously.

Savannah Peterson

>> I am super excited to hear what's going on. First of all, what's the latest with Kyndryl? I feel like everyone's coming up with a new announcement or something new and exciting out the gates. Azzy, I'll start with you.

>> Sure. From Google perspective, we kicked off this partnership about three years ago. They were one of the first partnerships we announced when we split from IBM. And since then, we've been growing gradually. But in the past year alone, we've invested heavily in their AI business. And as you saw at the show today with all the announcements where they're taking their market, their customers, and what they're looking for their partners to achieve in that regard, I think we've built the structure to be one of their large GSIs around the world.

Savannah Peterson

>> Go for it. I see.

>> Yeah, very excited. In the theme of AI, I'm over from the UK, as you might have spotted, we actually had the Prime Minister announce Kyndryl as being a key player in the UK AI market and opening a thousand people hub in Liverpool. We've got the Prime Minister to do that, so we're very excited about that. And actually it opened yesterday, the area.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh my gosh, congratulations.

Savannah Peterson

>> It opened yesterday, so very excited about that.

Savannah Peterson

>> Congratulations to you and the team.

Savannah Peterson

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's a really huge deal. One of the things that we're seeing in the landscape right now is collaboration unlike ever before. I think when it comes to, and you're talking about the public sector there, Kyndryl private sector, you're looking at these integrations of the biggest companies in the world like Google with partners on the ground actually making change and opening up that investment and that endeavor, what you just described, that means AI isn't going to take our jobs, right?

>> No, actually AI will change the jobs that we do, and I think collaborate. You talk about collaboration, I think almost all large organizations now see the ecosystem as part of the competitive strategy. We certainly do, and a lot of the partners are here, and of course Google are a major partner of that. So I think the ecosystem is important. Collaboration becomes critical, and no, AI won't take all our jobs.

Savannah Peterson

>> No, no. It was a nice segue because it's something that comes up on the show a lot obviously. And I do, ecosystems, one of the things, so we were having a discussion about who's going to win the current technological arms race that we're in right now, for lack of a better word, and the possibility of some players that have not always sat at the top ascending because of their ability to collaborate and because of these partnerships. And I think really, the key to that all is going to be the ecosystem. It is not going to be a single slice of this pie. It is going to be the folks with the right partners and with the right wherewithal and understanding and even connection to the developers and the consumers on both ends of that, that make this work. That's Kyndryl's bag. You guys are OG ecosystem. I know that's what we were talking about at Google Cloud Next last year. So how has the ecosystem evolved and how has your partnership matured with that evolution? Because a lot has changed in the last year since we were at Google Cloud Next.

>> So actually it came before Google. I had the rest of our ecosystem, so I had all the apps, the software, the ISVs. And the power of our ecosystem, when we bring that along with Google or any other platform that we partner with, that is a differentiator for Kyndryl. That is where we come in. We've been working with, I see over there the logos of VMware, now Broadcom, with SAP, with ServiceNow, with Oracle. We've been managing those environments for years. Sometimes we know more about those environments that customers and the customers know themselves. And now when they go on this AI journey, we know what we can do when, how, where, and what's the best way to de-risk these modernization, this transformation. So that's how we've been going, partnering with Google and the rest of our ecosystem, going to our customers showing up together to solve some of these AI problems. And one thing I'll say on AI, I think a lot of people think, oh, it's going to take away jobs. I actually think the productivity that is going to bring to our jobs, even us, is going to make us be more relevant. We can focus on things that are important versus the admin type time we spend doing our jobs.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, it's like if you never had to do the dishes or sweep the kitchen again.

>> I would love it.

Savannah Peterson

>> You know? How lovely. We'll never have to do an expense report. It's those type of activities that we're never enriching us as beings outside. I live on the beach and I try and make the sweeping activity, because it's an everyday thing, try and make it very meditative and nice, but that's not what we want to be spending our time on. That's not what anyone wants to be spending our time on.

>> Exactly.

>> I was just going to say one of the earlier points you touched on was ecosystems allowing other organizations to be competitive, and I think the competitive landscape has changed forever. So some of the things that used to be barriers to entry for an organization to come and compete, how many people you had, what markets you were in, what skills you had, disappear. Because if you can get any skills anywhere in the world and you can partner with anybody to get to any customer, suddenly you're a three people organization in Singapore and you can compete in the Bay Area.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah.

>> If you've got the ecosystem to compete with. So I think this is changing the nature of who we see in the top right quadrant as big players, and maybe we'll start to see ecosystems being mapped as to what is the competition.

Savannah Peterson

>> I suspect some of those mappers are listening to this right now.

>> There you go. There you go.

Savannah Peterson

>> I think it might be right on top of it, though, because it really is, we're not tackling a who's going to, it's not just about silicon. It's not just about GPUs or LPUs or TPUs or any of the stuff that we're talking about. While those are all very exciting, the reality is none of this matters if we don't have the right tools and software and ability to be in the cloud and on-prem, and at the edge to do all this stuff because that's what's going to make it all real. That's what's going to make it all real for our friends, our family,

>> Deliver some outcomes for the citizens of the businesses and so on, absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. So I think your example in the UK is really interesting, love to see that partnership and investment. Is that a trend that you're noticing across other municipalities and regions in terms of that concerted effort?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, so I think there's a few things happening. One is the skills is a huge issue across countries. So the commoditization of technology skills has reversed where it's become niche again and it needs to be local. So the sovereign nature of assets and data and technology footprints in the current environment becomes really important. Where is my data going to be held? Who owns the software? What is the country of origin of where the cloud is sitting? All of these things are very topical, and alongside that, where do I get my people from becomes really typical. So what's happening in Liverpool, we are getting that in discussions across the world from Mexico to the Middle East, in terms of how are you going to help build capability that we can use to build the AI businesses of the future.

Savannah Peterson

>> You brought up something really important in a conversation we've been having a bit today. The upskilling, again, this goes to combating the fears of AI doing anything nefarious in terms of our longevity as employees, but how are you helping your customers navigate? Because when we talk about infrastructure in particular, it tends to be a bit heritage. People have had core infrastructure for quite a while, folks working on those teams have decades of experience with some of those stacks. And I'm curious, what is the conversation like from a cultural perspective when you go and deploy these new tools and systems? Azzy, I'll start with you.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I was in Chile earlier this year and I met with the CIO and he was going through at one of our customers, and he was going through the evolution of his company, how in the past 20, 30 years, they've become clusters of different companies through mergers and acquisitions. And he went even as far as saying, we don't even use the same domain for our email addresses, and now you're telling me AI, I can't even deal with this small thing. I don't even know what the email address is for my peer in this other country, and you want to talk to AI, so show me how I can modernize my environment. Don't talk to me about tools and gadgets and this and that. I don't care about that. Tell me how you're going to first help me transform the culture of my team, because they don't want to automate, they don't want to introduce AI. We have invested. They're Google customers, so we have invested in Google, but we don't use it because they're scared it's going to affect their jobs. They're going to be laid off and so forth. So that was his big thing, and what we did because we, as an organization, went through the exact same thing when we split from IBM. We had to modernize our entire infrastructure. We also had to modernize and transform our team to think differently, to have a different culture, we have our own brand, our own culture, which is very different. It was really important to our leadership team. So I got him together with our, actually not no longer our CIO, but he used to be our CIO at the time. And I said, "It's a great connection for you to see how we did it ourselves, and then we can show you how do you go from top starting with your people." Technology is easy. Taking hardware out and replacing with something else that's easy, but changing the culture, changing how people view technology to make sure they actually leverage it to the best of their ability, I think that's the critical thing.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah. Pivoting, you just talked about such an important psychological moment and I love that example. If you want to hang out here for a second, but that flip from fear to joy, or even better, excitement or empowerment and realizing, whoa, wait a second. And I love that you brought that up. It's a perfect example because I think sometimes folks in our community, I speak lovingly to our fellow nerds, we'll think, when we made this thing and it does the thing better, so why don't you just adopt the thing? And you've got frontline workers of 15,000 people saying, excuse me? We haven't actually seen the proof on how much better this last tool you may have rolled out or this thing was, or how do we know if I do well with this new thing, I'm going to continue to progress and have my job? It starts with culture, it starts with the people, it starts with explaining that.

Savannah Peterson

>> And I used to work with Azzy and now Azzy's not there. How do I feel about eight hours without working with Azzy, right? It can get quite serious quite quickly, but.

>> I told him he'll be fed up with me by end of this conference.

Savannah Peterson

>> But if you expand this to the ambition levels, and we're talking to some governments for example, who want to develop native AI government, and so the culture changes with the society. Everybody. If you want to get a driving license, it's going to be different. If you're going to get a passport, you want to go to the doctors, everything's going to be different. And so this is where, for some of the larger complex projects, that's where the discussions is starting, with the culture. Let's just assume the technology can do anything we can imagine. How are we going to get the people to use it? And there isn't an answer, unfortunately. I think people are working through it and depending on the starting position, trying to work out what is that interface between man or woman and machine and what does it mean when you have, when everybody has an agent walking around with them, and I'm talking to my agent, who's talking to Azzy's agent, who's talking to Azzy, what does that actually look like and what does that mean for society? It's scary and exciting at the same time, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> What does it mean?

Savannah Peterson

>> I don't know. I have no idea.

Savannah Peterson

>> Now you're asking that question. I do love the notion, though. Well, there's a lot of visuals I think we can pull from, but I think about it as a little buddy. It's my little buddy who's not only preemptively looking out for me in whatever environment I might be in, but also saying, Hey, here's this information you need right now when you need it. You just got asked about this. You might not recall. Now you've got it all up. The cube has an AI and we index all of our videos in a really unique way that lets us refresh a bit when we are having a topical conversation or bringing a guest back on. But it's going to be like that on steroids and it's really exciting.

>> Exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm sure you talked to a lot of different customers and communities. I'm curious if you have any use cases or even just, you can be broad if you have to for confidentiality's sake, but any of the use cases that really have you personally excited that you've started to see in the works?

Savannah Peterson

>> So many, actually. I'd go to this native AI government as the one where I think the ambition is broad. It affects everybody in their country and it generally means that all government services are hidden. So actually I don't need a driving license. Why do I need a driving license? You know who I am. You know who I am, you know how I drive. I don't need a passport to come into the country. You know me. So a lot of stuff that we've created, in terms of that needs data and identity, all of that stuff disappears. And if that happened, what would it mean to get access to services? To go see a doctor or a doctor to come and see you based on what they know and what they know about you and et cetera, cetera. No, it raises lots of other questions around how do you feel about sharing that sort of data and what are people doing with the data and do you trust the people who have your data? But if it's the government, generally, hopefully, generally the citizens would support them. So I'm quite excited in terms of real tangible what I think is going to happen. It's going to change everything for that country as that goes live.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I think you're absolutely right. A nation of people who never have to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles again is a happy nation.

>> Can you imagine?

Savannah Peterson

>> As far as I'm concerned. And I do think it's interesting, facial recognition, we're all travelers, we're all international travelers very regularly. A lot of that being done with facial recognition.

>> That's right.

Savannah Peterson

>> My only advice is to the people at Clear, I don't know if you guys use Clear, if they could not say "We've finished taking pictures of your eyes" every time they do the facial recognition, it's just a little much. I feel like they could just say, they could say, "We've confirmed your identity." Great. I feel better about that. Instead of, jeez, did I do my makeup okay? How are my eyes? I don't know. I'm used to this. I'm used to thinking about it like this. What about you Azzy? What are you excited about here? Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, lots. I think in all the meetings we've had with both customers and Googlers, at the end of the day I said, now we just got to absorb and see how do we make changes internally, even for us internally, we've seen things here that I've thought I want that tool, that would help me do my job. And I've actually done it in my team. I'm all about automation and taking away this small, tiny, irritating tasks that nobody wants to do. So when I initially took over our Google partnership, I brought in three people with me. One of them, I'm not going to mention her name because she's super shy, but she's a master of automation. The first thing she did, she went across our business to see, okay, what is it that we do? And she started automating things. And truth be told, the rest of the team is like, "So what am I going to do now? That was like 38 hours of my 40-hour week." That's all automated, gets done 30 minutes automatically. And then I started introducing new work. Do this, this is a lot more productive, this actually helps you grow in your career. This is where you want to go now. You can actually do all the things that helps you get there. So I have seen it in my own team working some of the technology we saw Google announced here, I would love Ismael to buy it for me.

>> Yeah, baby,

Savannah Peterson

>> So I could use it. But I think there is a lot of opportunity, not just for us, as Kyndryl, but also what we can do for our customers. I think that's the more exciting thing.

>> I have one more I've just thought of.

Savannah Peterson

>> Love this.

>> Because one of the highlights of how I spend my time is live music. So what would be ideal is if I could see a Bruce Springsteen live without having to queue up, without somebody falling asleep next to me or spilling their beers as I was walking in, in the comfort of my own home with all of the visual and augmented technology.

Savannah Peterson

>> With your own snacks and your own beverages.

>> Can you believe that? And then when you finish, you can go to bed. I'm up for that. I think that would be really exciting. Events will be changed forever.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes. There is a thing called Starline that can make that happen. It's the people technology. I think they have the demo up front.

>> There you go.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, there you go. There there's tomorrow for you.

Savannah Peterson

>> I got to go find them. I got to go find them.

Savannah Peterson

>> All right, I have one. This is great. This is building on that, and a relevant final question for you both. When we're at Google Cloud Next 2026, what do you hope to be able to say then that you can't yet say today? Ismael, I'm going to start with you since you got lucky and I went that time.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, I was blown away this morning with the keynote and the whole agent space work and the ability to create agents, govern agents, and then put them to use in a way that we were talking about as fantasy 12 months ago. It's real. We saw it. I was blown away and I would love to be able to say, here are 10 customers who are using this, and it changed their business, and it changed the way their employees work, their consumers interacted with them and it's opened up a whole series of new opportunities for them. Because things are moving so fast that, and I keep saying things are moving really fast, but I was shocked by what I saw today and I hope and I wish, and I think we will, in a year's time, get that implemented with multiple customers.

Savannah Peterson

>> I can't wait to tell those stories right here on this stage when you do. That's going to be so fun. Azzy, anything to add?

>> Well, I would like to do that and then for Thomas and Sundar to invite us up on stage.

>> There you go.

>> So we can talk about it. No pressure, but that's what I would love.

Savannah Peterson

>> I like it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Love that. You heard it here first, folks. The preview of the Google Cloud Next 2026 keynote is happening right here on the news desk on SiliconANGLE Media and theCUBE. Thank you both so much.

>> Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> This was great. And I have to say, you're going to have to tell your Kyndryl colleagues, you raised the bar of cool one notch up.

>> We did say.

Savannah Peterson

>> You got to step it up.

Savannah Peterson

>> You said you bring it and y'all keep bringing it. We're very grateful to tell those stories.

>> Thank you so much.

Savannah Peterson

>> And we're grateful to all of you for tuning in to these 14 segments here, the first day of Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, Nevada. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.