Waqas Ahmed, OpenText & Yemi Falokun, Google Cloud
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Waqas Ahmed, vice president of AI Engineering at OpenText, joins Yemi Falokun, global ISV partner solutions lead at Google Cloud, to talk with theCUBE's John Furrier about how decades of structured enterprise content are becoming the contextual intelligence layer that unlocks production-ready agentic AI at scale. Ahmed positions OpenText not as a storage platform but as the data context layer that makes autonomous enterprise workflows possible — feeding AI agents the right information at the right time while enforcing security policies, access controls and audit trails that make outcomes both reliable and explainable. Falokun underscores how Google Cloud's full-stack platform, from infrastructure to the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, provides the governed foundation that gives joint customers a secure environment in which to deploy those workflows at speed. The conversation also explores how OpenText's Content Aviator and Aviator Studio are now integrated with the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform through both A2A and MCP protocols, enabling customers to connect managed enterprise content to broader agent ecosystems without writing a line of code. Ahmed outlines a guiding principle — bring AI to the data, not data to the AI — explaining how first-party agents available on Google Cloud Marketplace enforce local governance and permissions while contributing intelligent context to multi-agent orchestrations. Falokun and Ahmed address private AI and data sovereignty, detailing how the partnership ensures all processing can remain within sovereign boundaries, with customer-managed encryption and regional data residency built in by default. From maturing interoperability protocols to agentic fleets operating in production, both guests provide a roadmap for how enterprises can move beyond experimentation to measurable productivity gains and demonstrable ROI.