Google launches AI-powered tools in Cloud Modernize portfolio

Google Cloud wants your company’s oldest software. On October 5, 2026, it launched a new Modernize portfolio built to drag mainframes, VMware setups, and other legacy systems into cloud-native territory.

The pitch is that AI does much of the grunt work. That includes assessment, code analysis, and migration, which have historically been the slow, expensive, nobody-wants-this-project parts of enterprise IT.

What Google actually shipped

The announcement came via the Google Cloud Blog, written by Souvik Choudhury and Tom Nikl. It folds existing migration tools together with upgraded AI features under one umbrella.

First is Migration Center, now equipped with a Gemini-powered tool called the Agentic Quick Estimator. Its job is sizing up existing infrastructure so companies know what they’re dealing with before they start moving anything.

Second is the Modernization Hub. It performs source code analysis and dependency mapping, which means it reads old applications and charts which pieces rely on which.

Third is EKS-to-GKE Agentic Migration, now available in public preview. EKS is Amazon Web Services’ managed Kubernetes offering, and GKE is Google Kubernetes Engine. Kubernetes is the software many companies use to run and scale containerized apps.

Google is also leaning on guardrails. The portfolio includes human-in-the-loop approvals and parallel validation methods meant to cut project timelines and risk. AI can propose the changes, but a person still signs off.

New hardware for heavy lifting

Software was only half the launch. Google also introduced new virtual machines aimed at demanding enterprise workloads.

The headliner is the X5 Series, offering up to 43 TiB of memory. Google is pointing these at memory-hungry systems such as SAP S/4HANA, the enterprise resource planning software that runs finance and operations at many large companies.

Alongside the X5, Google rolled out M4N Series VMs plus Z4D and Z4M instances. Those are positioned for speed and AI workloads.

The customer receipts

NetEase Games reported that its infrastructure scaling time on GKE dropped from hours to five minutes. The company also cited roughly 40% cost savings.

Deutsche Börse Group said it saw more than a 50% reduction in aggregation latency. Development cycles at the exchange operator shrank from months to days.

Intesa Sanpaolo, the Italian banking group, used a capability called Dual Run. The bank said it gave it more confidence in regulatory and mainframe migrations.

How we got here

The Modernize portfolio isn’t arriving out of nowhere. Google Cloud has been stacking migration upgrades throughout 2026. In August, it added AI-powered quick assessments to Migration Center. In September, it released additional migration tools. The October launch packages that work into a single, branded offering with a clearer sales story.

The competitive context is hard to miss. Coverage by Benzinga framed the move as Google targeting aging enterprise technology and competing with AWS for EKS migrations.

What this means

The caveat is that customer testimonials are curated by definition. NetEase, Deutsche Börse, and Intesa Sanpaolo are the success stories Google chose to highlight, not a random sample.

The EKS-to-GKE tool also remains in public preview. That means it’s available to try but not yet a finished, generally available product, so cautious enterprises will likely watch before committing production workloads.