Source URL: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/get-started-with-vertex-ai-agent-builder/
Source: Cloud Blog
Title: Achieve agentic productivity with Vertex AI Agent Builder
Feedly Summary: Enterprises need to move from experimenting with AI agents to achieving real productivity, but many struggle to scale their agents from prototypes to secure, production-ready systems.
The question is no longer if agents deliver value, but how to deploy them with enterprise confidence. And there’s immense potential for those who solve the scaling challenge. Our 2025 ROI of AI Report reveals that 88% of agentic AI early adopters are already seeing a positive return on investment (ROI) on generative AI.
Vertex AI Agent Builder is the unified platform that helps you close this gap. It’s where you can build the smartest agents, and deploy and scale them with enterprise-grade confidence.
Today, we’ll walk you through agent development on Vertex AI Agent Builder, and highlight a couple of key updates to fuel your next wave of agent-driven productivity and growth.
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The five pillars of enterprise agent development on Vertex AI Agent Builder
Moving an agent from prototype to production requires a cohesive suite of tools. Vertex AI Agent Builder simplifies this complexity by providing an integrated workflow across five essential pillars, supporting your agent through every step of its lifecycle.
1. Agent frameworksYour agent development journey begins here. You configure and orchestrate your agents using your preferred open source framework. The Agent Development Kit (ADK) – what we use internally at Google – is one of the many options available, and it has already seen over 4.7 million downloads since April.
2. Model choiceModels are the intelligent core of your agent. Our platform is provider-agnostic, supporting every leading model – including Gemini 2.5 Flash Pro – alongside hundreds of third-party and open source models from Vertex AI Model Garden. With the ability to Provision Throughput, you can secure dedicated capacity for consistent, low-latency performance at scale.
3. Tools for taking actionsOnce built, your agent needs tools to take action and interact with the real world. Grounding is a critical step that connects your AI to verifiable, real-time data – dramatically reducing hallucinations and building user trust. On Vertex AI, you can connect your agent to trusted, real-time data sources you already rely on. For example, Grounding with Google Maps is now available for everyone in production. Your agents gain accuracy and the ability to reduce hallucinations by accessing the freshness of Google Maps, which includes factual information on 250 million places for location-aware recommendations and actions.
4. Scalability and performanceDeploy and manage at scale using Vertex AI Agent Engine. We built this suite of modular, managed services to instantly move your prototypes into production. The platform provides everything needed for operation and scaling, including a fully managed runtime, integrated Sessions and Memory Bank to personalize context across user interactions, and integrated evaluation and observability services.
Since launch, hundreds of thousands of agents have been deployed to Vertex AI Agent Engine. Here are some recent updates we’re most excited about:
Secure code execution: We now provide a managed, sandboxed environment to run agent-generated code. This is vital for mitigating risks while unlocking advanced capabilities for tasks like financial calculations or data science modeling .
Agent-to-Agent collaboration: Build sophisticated, reliable multi-agent systems with native support for the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol when you deploy to the Agent Engine runtime. This allows your agents to securely discover, collaborate, and delegate tasks to other agents, breaking down operational silos .
Real-Time interactive agents: Unlock a new class of interactive experiences with Bidirectional Streaming. This provides a persistent, two-way communication channel ideal for real-time conversational AI, live customer support, and interactive applications that process audio or video inputs .
Simplified path to production: We have streamlined the journey from a local ADK prototype to a live service, with a one-line deployment in the ADK CLI to Agent Engine.
5. Built-in trust and securitySecurity and compliance are built into every layer of the Vertex AI architecture, ensuring control is paramount. This includes preventing data exfiltration with Virtual Private Cloud Service Controls (VPC-SC) and using your own encryption keys with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK). We also meet strict compliance milestones like HIPAA and Data Residency (DRZ) compliance requirements. Your agents can handle sensitive workloads in highly regulated industries with full confidence.
Get started today
It’s time to move your AI strategy from experimentation to exponential growth. Bridge the production gap and deploy your first enterprise agent with Vertex AI Agent Builder, the secure, scalable, and intelligent advantage you need to succeed.
AI Summary and Description: Yes
Summary: The text discusses the transition from AI agent prototype to production, highlighting Vertex AI Agent Builder as a platform that enhances productivity through five key development pillars. It emphasizes the importance of security and compliance, offering a cohesive suite of tools for enterprises seeking to leverage AI confidently.
Detailed Description:
The content elaborates on the need for enterprises to evolve their use of AI agents from experimentation to fully functional, secured systems. Here are the major points that underscore its relevance to professionals in AI, cloud, and infrastructure security:
– **Shift from Experimentation to Production**: Enterprises face challenges in scaling AI agents to production-ready systems despite recognizing their value. The text underscores the necessity for a secure deployment strategy.
– **Vertex AI Agent Builder Overview**: A unified platform designed to streamline agent development, ensuring that businesses can efficiently build, scale, and deploy AI agents with confidence.
– **Five Pillars of Development**:
1. **Agent Frameworks**: Leveraging open-source tools, such as the Agent Development Kit (ADK), to initiate the agent development process.
2. **Model Choice**: Provider-agnostic model support allows varied intelligent systems, thereby enhancing adaptability for organizations.
3. **Tools for Taking Actions**: Real-time data connections are critical to reducing errors (hallucinations) and improving trust through applications like Google Maps.
4. **Scalability and Performance**: The Vertex AI Agent Engine allows for smooth transitions from prototypes to operational phases through managed services that ensure effective scaling.
5. **Built-in Trust and Security**:
– Security controls such as Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Service Controls and Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) protect sensitive data.
– Compliance with industry standards (HIPAA, Data Residency) fosters confidence in handling regulated workloads.
– **Recent Innovations**: The platform has introduced advanced features, including secure code execution in a managed environment, support for agent collaboration (A2A protocol), and real-time interaction capabilities, enhancing both functionality and security.
By emphasizing a robust framework for security and compliance throughout the development lifecycle, this text is highly pertinent to professionals focused on leveraging AI technologies within secure, enterprise-level environments.