In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Sharon Prosser, vice president of small and medium business sales and scaled acquisition of Google LLC, joins theCUBE's Rebecca Knight and co-host Alison Kosik to discuss how small and medium businesses are emerging as the next frontier for AI adoption. Prosser describes a market moving decisively past the trial-and-error phase into wide-scale deployment, driven by the embedding of Gemini directly into Google Workspace — putting AI tools in front of tens of millions of SMBs through familiar platforms like Gmail, Docs and Google Meet. She positions Gemini Enterprise as the "front door to all things AI," enabling resource-constrained companies to connect their data and launch AI-powered workflows in minutes.
The conversation also explores the support infrastructure Google Cloud has built to guide SMBs through this shift. Prosser details a partner ecosystem of more than 100,000 certified providers who offer on-the-ground expertise and industry-specific matchmaking — a critical resource for companies that lack the internal talent to design an AI roadmap. She also highlights the Cloud Skills Boost platform and its free Generative AI Cloud Leadership certification as accessible entry points for communities without dedicated cloud practitioners. Customer examples ground the opportunity: Brazilian dairy company Tirol used Gemini Enterprise to build an interactive knowledge bank that democratized supply chain visibility, while design firm WATG compressed visual proposal creation from days to minutes. Digital marketing company Huge takes it further, deploying autonomous research and contract proposal agents that free sellers to focus on customer relationships rather than administrative prep. From automating paper-intensive workflows to deploying goal-oriented agent fleets, Prosser outlines a clear path for SMBs ready to move from AI experimentation to AI-native operations.
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Sharon Prosser, Google
Sharon Prosser of Google, vice president of small and medium-sized business sales, appears on theCUBE Research to discuss how small and medium-sized businesses move from experimentation to broader artificial intelligence adoption at Google Cloud Next 2026. Prosser addresses practical deployment strategies and use cases such as Google Workspace integrations, Gemini Enterprise as an on-ramp and partner enablement. They emphasize workflow automation and faster content generation as common outcomes across diverse SMBs.
Prosser recommends prioritizing day-one value use cases, leveraging partners and Cloud Skills Boost training and building agents to reduce toil and improve customer and employee satisfaction. They note an ecosystem of more than 100,000 partners that supports scaled implementation and faster time to value.
The interview, hosted by Alison Kosik and Rebecca Knight of theCUBE, highlights industry use cases and partner-led approaches that integrate AI with existing cloud workflows to deliver measurable outcomes. Watch for actionable strategies, deployment considerations and examples that support SMB cloud and AI adoption.
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Sharon Prosser, vice president of small and medium business sales and scaled acquisition of Google LLC, joins theCUBE's Rebecca Knight and co-host Alison Kosik to discuss how small and medium businesses are emerging as the next frontier for AI adoption. Prosser describes a market moving decisively past the trial-and-error phase into wide-scale deployment, driven by the embedding of Gemini directly into Google Workspace — putting AI tools in front of tens of millions of SMBs through familiar platforms like Gmail, ...Read more
Sharon Prosser
VP of SMB SalesGoogle
In this interview from Google Cloud Next 2026, Sharon Prosser, vice president of small and medium business sales and scaled acquisition of Google LLC, joins theCUBE's Rebecca Knight and co-host Alison Kosik to discuss how small and medium businesses are emerging as the next frontier for AI adoption. Prosser describes a market moving decisively past the trial-and-error phase into wide-scale deployment, driven by the embedding of Gemini directly into Google Workspace — putting AI tools in front of tens of millions of SMBs through familiar platforms like Gmail, ...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
How are small and medium-sized businesses using Google Cloud's AI products to streamline workflows and improve customer and employee satisfaction?add
What factors have driven the recent increase in AI adoption among small and medium-sized businesses?add
What real-world AI use cases are helping small and medium-sized businesses—particularly examples (like use of Gemini Enterprise) for improving workflows, knowledge sharing, and content/media generation?add
What advice would you give to small and medium-sized businesses that are beginning their AI journeys?add
>> Welcome back to Google Cloud Next '26. We are streaming live right here in Las Vegas. I'm Alison Kosik, alongside Rebecca Knight. I'm so excited to get into today's coverage, especially the interview we're about to have. It's about small, medium-sized businesses. So, much of the time we talk about these ginormous businesses when it comes to the cloud, when it's about AI.
Rebecca Knight
>> Indeed, they get a lot of airspace, but in fact, the small and medium-sized businesses are the beating hearts of our communities and our economy, frankly. So, this is going to be a good one.
Alison Kosik
>> Yeah, let's dig in. Let's bring in Sharon Prosser. She's the vice president of SMB sales with Google Cloud. Welcome to theCUBE.
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah, great to be here. And I'm always so excited to talk about small to medium businesses and what we're hearing from the front lines.
Alison Kosik
>> And so, what are you hearing from the front lines with small to medium businesses?
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah, there is momentum with a capital M. And I believe that small to medium businesses are quickly emerging as the next frontier for AI adoption. And so, it's a very exciting time for us. And as you mentioned, the enterprise type organizations, they've been at this AI adoption for some time. And what we've seen of late is this pivot across SMBs of taking our products in, figuring out how they can put them to use. And so, we're seeing this huge uptick in adoption. And I think there's a few trends that we've seen off of this. And one, again, as I mentioned, enterprise accounts, they've been tracking this strong adoption rate over the last few years. But for small to medium businesses, they've been discovering AI differently. They haven't had the deep resources that larger organizations have. So, it's been more of a trial-and-error phase for them, a lot of experimentation, a lot of POCs. And we're really starting to move past that phase now and see this wider adoption. And with that, real use cases are emerging, which are adding value to SMBs. And these are use cases which are focused on streamlining workflows. Anywhere where there's a point of friction in something that a knowledge worker has to do day-to-day, any sort of mundane task, they're figuring out that if they apply AI to those problems, they get a faster workflow. And at the end, they're going to get a higher CSAT score from their customers. And we can't forget that employee satisfaction is so important as well as they don't have to continue to participate in these mundane tasks. And so, I think this uptick that we're seeing, it's a huge testament to Google Cloud and our AI products and just how they're meeting the SMBs where they are today. So, very excited.
Rebecca Knight
>> Yeah. So, as you said, you've got momentum with a capital M. What do you think is driving this? Is it simplicity? Is it price? Is it a need to keep up with the larger companies? And what also drove the hesitation initially?
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah. I think a couple things. One is I think it's the ease of access to AI tooling that has really become a game-changer. I'll talk a little bit about Google Workspace. So, this is Gmail and Docs and Drive, these are tools that are really familiar to small to medium businesses. Last year, we moved Gemini into our Google Workspace products, which gave all of our SMBs, and we've got double-digit millions of SMBs using Google Workspace, it put AI at their fingertips. So, that was easy access to AI. It started to get those SMBs comfortable with how to use help me write in a Gmail or take notes from me in a Google Meet. So, that was one easy access point for us. The other is just our tooling with Gemini Enterprise, which we're positioning as the front door to all things AI. That has been a game-changer as well for us. And customers can use Gemini Enterprise as an AI agent platform and they can get it up and running in minutes. They can connect their data and make it accessible to their knowledge workers. And so, I think it's ease of access that has been one of the big game-changers for us here.
Alison Kosik
>> Because small and medium-sized businesses don't necessarily have the resources that larger enterprise companies do, how do they know what they don't know? How do they know the opportunities, the things that cloud can do, the things that technology can do for their businesses? What's the best way that they can learn the possibilities that are out there?
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah. So, with small to medium businesses, a big part of our go-to-market is to make sure that the ecosystem around those small to medium businesses, that it's strong and it's supportive. And so, we work a lot with partners that are on the ground in those communities there to help customers before, during and after the work that they're doing with AI. And so, that's been a game-changer for us as well. And we've got over 100,000 partners. We are working every day to make sure that they are up to speed on all of our products, that they're going through their certifications, so that as they approach small to medium businesses, they can immediately add value. I think the second angle to making sure SMBs know where to go and how to get started, we've been focusing a lot on cloud skills as well in each of the communities. And this is a chance for an SMB to turn to a developer community or a practitioner that's in their community or accessible to them that already knows Google Cloud and how to get started. And we promote a lot of our enablement through our Cloud Skills Boost platform. And there's a catalog of trainings that anyone can take. The one I like specifically is the Generative AI Cloud Leadership Training, and that's a certification that anyone can come in and work at to get, and these are free, so they're also very accessible. And so, we know cloud skills, making sure that the talent that understands Google Cloud is available and accessible to them. And I think those are two ways in which SMBs can get started.
Rebecca Knight
>> In terms of finding use cases, I mean, the SMB market is so incredibly diverse. How is Google Cloud helping these companies find use cases from a dairy manufacturer to an investment group?
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah. And so, real use cases have emerged, as I mentioned earlier, and these are really offering more efficiencies to the small to medium businesses. And again, as I had mentioned, it's looking at the workflows that employees have to do and making sure that if there's any... Just a large lapse of time that it might take, maybe it's a very paper-intensive type of process that they have to do, I think that's where AI can really add value. And I'll give you an example with respect to knowledge sharing. And I'm going to actually use a Brazilian company that is in the dairy business and it's a company called Tirol. They are a 52-year-old small to medium business that has been producing dairy for the market. And they brought in Gemini Enterprise and created an interactive knowledge bank for their employees, which basically democratized all of the data access and brought more visibility to the supply chain to help their workers. And that's a common use case that I think a lot of small to medium businesses can relate to, and it's a matter of bringing that story out to the market in all geographies. I think the other use case that we see adding a lot of value is for organizations that are building content or collateral, either for their employees or for the market, we classify it as media generation. And so, a perfect example is a firm called WATG. It's Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo. And they are a powerhouse design firm focused in the hospitality area. They build beautiful locations for name brand hotels, and they are using Gemini Enterprise within their organization to more rapidly build visual content for their proposals. And that has helped to accelerate their engagement with their customers, taking it from days down to minutes. These are bright spots for small to medium businesses. And I think it's just the tip of the spear for us because as we go forward, while these offer wide adoption, I think now in this next wave of momentum, it's going to be the act of going deeper and really starting to look at where we can build agents, make them autonomous, and do the work for the SMBs. And so, we're excited about what's next.
Alison Kosik
>> So, there's clearly an uptick in adoption for small to medium businesses, but like many small to medium businesses, with anything, there are challenges. Go through the challenges with me that they face and maybe give me some use cases, some examples of small to medium businesses that overcame challenges and how they went ahead and did that.
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah. So, from a challenge standpoint, I think it really goes back to oftentimes small to medium businesses are resource constrained. And so, they don't have the internal resources to lay out the roadmap of how they should take this forward. And so, I think that where first experiences have maybe not gone as planned or they've gone more slowly than expected, it's oftentimes the root cause is back to they didn't have the expertise to know which buttons to push and to really make it work. And so, it really comes back to our reliance on a really strong partner ecosystem to bring them in, to help provide the architecture and the steps of how do you embed this in your business and get value? And that's really something we rely on in small to medium business. And again, with over 100,000 partners, we've got a lot of different partners that have different specializations. And so, part of the job there is to make sure we do the right matchmaking so that, based on the SMB needs, maybe there's an industry nuance that we find and match them to the right partner. But the good news is we've got a very strong partner ecosystem to draw from.
Rebecca Knight
>> I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the workers at these small and medium-sized companies. You said at the outset that you're reducing the toil, you're reducing the tedious tasks that they have to do, whether it's drafting an email to a customer or do some kind of media sharing or content generation. And you said that it also leads to higher job satisfaction, more loyalty. Can you talk a little bit about that and then also how you build trust with these workers who may be skeptical or hesitant about adopting AI?
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah. And so, I think the beauty of where we're at right now, and we are in early days with this AI adoption, because we're impacting the workflow that the employee is involved with, they can immediately see the wow factor with AI. And that's important because that gets buy-in, that gets them trusting the change in how they do their job day-to-day. And so, it's a matter of making sure that we're listening carefully to where those pain points are. And I think of a customer, it's called Huge. They are a digital marketing platform, and they are in the small to medium business ranks, and they have built agents. So, they're exploring that agentic AI use case. They've built a research agent and a contract proposal agent, so now all of their new customer sellers can leverage these agents to do the research on the customer, take that information and build a proposal, and they can do that now in minutes. So, for a new business seller, that's game-changing because they then get to spend more time with their customers and go get the next new acquisition. And so, it's making sure we're really hitting on those pain points and then making sure that they work and that's what builds trust.
Alison Kosik
>> One last question before we go, we've got a few minutes left. As these small to medium businesses embark on their AI journeys, you mentioned this is early days, what's your advice you would give these companies?
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah, I would say relative to the enterprise organizations who are a few innings into this game, small to medium businesses, this is their first time at bat. And I think it's making sure we land on a few of those real use cases that provide day-one value to the organizations. I think that the light bulb has to go off quickly for a small to medium business. I mean, every minute counts for an SMB, and so I think just being open to helping us understand their pain points where their workflows are maybe a little bit more arduous or paper intensive. And with Gemini Enterprise, it's a perfect way to kick off the AI experience. So, we're excited to bring that to all of the SMBs.
Alison Kosik
>> Thanks so much for your time today. Really enjoyed it, Sharon. Thanks a lot.
Sharon Prosser
>> Yeah.
Rebecca Knight
>> Really interesting conversation.
Alison Kosik
>> Thanks. And you've been watching theCUBE, the leader in live technology coverage. We're going to be right back.
Alison Kosik
Rebecca Knight