At Google Cloud Next 2025, the firm made a conscious pivot—moving away from cloud infrastructure management to empowering teams through application-first design. Google introduced a string of new tools and updates with one message loud and clear: developers should devote less time piecing together services and more time creating what matters.
First, the newly released Application Design Centre—now available in public preview—provides a visual, drag-and-drop canvas that abstracts away infrastructure issues. Rather than cobbling together virtual machines, networking, and storage, teams are able to deploy infrastructure-as-code and monitor changes from one console. Most importantly, it directly integrates with App Hub, giving real-time visibility into deployment health and bringing trouble-shooting insights to the surface when things break.
Together, Google introduced Cloud Hub as well, in public preview, to cater to the increasing complexity of multi-region, multi-service deployments. The tool brings together system health metrics, performance, and billing into a single dashboard, enabling quicker decision-making in hybrid configurations.
In the meantime, artificial intelligence was in the spotlight. Gemini Code Assist now integrates into Android Studio, JetBrains IDEs, and Firebase Studio, taking care of everything from code generation to user interface design. It even constructs complete apps from written spec, while providing kanban-style boards to plan processes visually.
On the operations front, Gemini Cloud Assist takes AI to cloud monitoring and planning for resources. A new Investigations feature, available in private preview, assists in tracing incidents back to their causes—often before teams even know there’s a problem.
In addition to software, Google also tackled global connectivity with Cloud WAN, a managed service that is capable of taking over from legacy MPLS and SD-WAN architectures. In particular, its Cross-Site Interconnect connects data centers with high-speed, low-latency paths that become integrated into security providers. Google says this could cut total cost of ownership by up to 40%.
Together, the updates present a larger picture. Instead of tending to nuts and bolts of infrastructure, Google is challenging developers to think at the scale of automation, insight, and size. By weaving AI throughout the toolchain and making global cloud operations easier to manage, the company is building toward a day when application development—and not infrastructure—becomes the priority.
