At Google Cloud NEXT ’25, we witnessed a significant transformation in how modern applications are built, deployed, and maintained. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, Making Science was there to see how Google is reimagining the software development lifecycle with AI at its core. This blog post explores the key innovations in software and application modernization that will enable organizations to build and deploy applications faster, more reliably, and with greater intelligence than ever before.
The AI-Powered Application Development Landscape
Google’s vision for application modernization centers around integrating AI throughout the entire software development lifecycle. The company revealed that internally, more than 25% of new code at Google is already generated by AI and reviewed by Google engineers—a testament to AI’s transformative impact on software development.
Gemini Code Assist: The AI-Powered Development Partner
Gemini Code Assist has evolved into a comprehensive solution for developers with several new capabilities:
- Kanban Board: Developers can now interact with AI agents on a Kanban board, tracking agent assistance across common developer tasks such as code migration, new feature implementation, code review, test generation, model testing, and documentation.
- Enhanced Partner Integration: Gemini Code Assist now integrates with tools from partners such as Atlassian, Sentry, Snyk, and others, providing a more connected development experience.
- Android Studio Integration: Gemini Code Assist is now available in Android Studio for professional developers who want AI coding assistance with enterprise security and privacy features.
- App Prototyping Agent: A new agent in preview for Gemini Code Assist within Firebase Studio can turn app ideas into fully functional prototypes, including UI, backend code, and AI flows.
Application Design and Management Reinvented
Google introduced several new tools to simplify application design and management:
- Application Design Center (in preview): Provides a visual, canvas-style approach to designing and modifying application templates, allowing developers to configure application templates for deployment, view infrastructure as code in-line, and collaborate with teammates on designs.
- Cloud Hub (in preview): A central command center for the entire application landscape, providing insights into deployments, health and troubleshooting, resource optimization, maintenance, quotas and reservations, and support cases.
- App Hub: Now integrated with over 20 Google Cloud products, this service models applications as interconnected services and workloads for an application-centric view.
- Application Monitoring (in public preview): Supports automatically tagging telemetry (logs, metrics, and traces) with application context, application-aware alerts, and out-of-the-box application dashboards.
- Cost Explorer (in private preview): Provides visibility into granular application costs and utilization metrics, allowing teams to identify efficiency opportunities.
Gemini Cloud Assist: AI for Infrastructure and Operations
Beyond coding, Google is extending AI assistance to cloud operations with Gemini Cloud Assist:
- Integration with Application Design Center: Accelerates application infrastructure design and deployment.
- Investigations: Leverages data in your cloud environment to accelerate troubleshooting and issue resolution.
- Cross-Service Integration: Now integrated across Google Cloud services including Storage Insights, Cloud Observability, Firebase, Database Center, Flow Analyzer, and FinOps Hub, as well as security and compliance-related services.
- FinOps Hub 2.0: Now includes waste insights and cost optimization opportunities from Gemini Cloud Assist.
Container and Kubernetes Innovations for AI Workloads
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) has been enhanced to better support AI workloads:
- GKE Inference Gateway: Offers intelligent scaling and load-balancing capabilities, helping handle request scheduling and routing with gen AI model-aware scaling and load-balancing techniques.
- GKE Inference Quickstart: Allows developers to choose an AI model and desired performance, with GKE automatically configuring the right infrastructure, accelerators, and Kubernetes resources.
- RayTurbo on GKE: In partnership with Anyscale, Google announced an optimized version of open-source Ray that delivers 4.5x faster data processing and requires 50% fewer nodes for serving.
- Cluster Director for GKE (formerly Hypercompute Cluster, now GA): Lets developers deploy and manage large clusters of accelerated VMs with compute, storage, and networking — all operating as a single unit.
- GKE Autopilot Improvements: Including faster pod scheduling, scaling reaction time, and capacity right-sizing.
Firebase: The Full-Stack AI App Development Platform
Firebase has evolved into a comprehensive platform for building AI-powered applications:
- Firebase Studio (in preview): A cloud-based, agentic development environment powered by Gemini that includes everything developers need to create and publish production-quality full-stack AI apps quickly, all in one place.
- Genkit: An open-source framework for building AI-powered applications using your preferred language, now with early support for Python and expanded support for Go.
- Vertex AI in Firebase: Now includes support for the Live API for Gemini models, enabling more conversational interactions in apps, such as allowing customers to ask audio questions and get responses.
- Firebase Data Connect (now GA): Offering the reliability of Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with instant GraphQL APIs and type-safe SDKs.
- Firebase App Hosting (now GA): Providing an opinionated, git-centric hosting solution for modern, full-stack web apps.
- App Testing Agent (in preview): Prepares mobile apps for production by generating, managing, and executing end-to-end tests.
Real-World Impact: Customer Success Stories
Google’s application modernization innovations are already delivering significant impact across industries:
- Deutsche Bank: Built DB Lumina, a new Gemini-powered tool that can synthesize financial data and research, turning hundreds of pages into a one-page brief in seconds for traders and wealth managers.
- Nokia: Built a coding tool to speed up app development with Gemini, enabling developers to create 5G applications faster.
- Reddit: Using Gemini on Vertex AI to power “Reddit Answers,” its AI-powered conversation platform, and Enterprise Search to improve its homepage experience.
- Samsung: Integrating Gemini on Google Cloud into Ballie, its newest AI home companion robot, enabling more personalized and intelligent interactions.
- The Sphere: Created an immersive “Wizard of Oz” experience reconceptualized through AI, bringing the classic film to life on the 160,000-square-foot domed screen at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
Developer Program Enhancements
To support the developer community, Google introduced:
- Enterprise Tier of the Google Developer Program (in limited preview): Providing a safe and affordable way to explore Google Cloud and its AI products for a set monthly cost of $75/month per seat.
Making Science Perspective
As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, Making Science sees these software and application modernization innovations as game-changing for development teams. The integration of AI throughout the development lifecycle—from ideation and design to coding, testing, deployment, and operations—represents a fundamental shift in how applications are built and maintained.
For technical decision-makers, the most significant takeaways are:
- AI-augmented development: Gemini Code Assist is evolving from a coding assistant to a comprehensive development partner, handling increasingly complex aspects of the development lifecycle.
- Simplified application management: New tools like Application Design Center and Cloud Hub provide a more visual, intuitive approach to application design and management.
- Kubernetes optimized for AI: GKE enhancements make it the platform of choice for deploying AI workloads at scale with optimal performance and cost.
- Full-stack AI development: Firebase Studio provides an end-to-end environment for building AI-powered applications quickly.
Organizations that leverage these capabilities can expect:
- Accelerated development cycles
- Improved code quality and security
- More efficient resource utilization
- Faster deployment of AI-powered applications
The companies that embrace these innovations will be better positioned to respond to market changes, deliver better customer experiences, and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly AI-driven world.
Looking to modernize your application development practices or build AI-powered applications? Contact our team at Making Science to discover how we can help accelerate your organization’s application modernization journey.
Cookie configuration