Deployments, also referred to as Agent Runtime, is Google’s managed runtime environment for operating autonomous AI agents in production. The service evolved from Vertex AI Agent Engine, introduced in 2024, and is now part of the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI). It targets development teams that want to run agent frameworks such as the Agent Development Kit (ADK), LangChain, LangGraph, or LlamaIndex at scale without managing their own infrastructure.
What is Deployments (Agent Runtime)?
Deployments handles all the infrastructure surrounding the operation of LLM agents: automatic scaling, session and memory management via a Memory Bank, logging/tracing, and integration into the Google Cloud ecosystem. Developers deploy their existing agent frameworks directly onto the runtime without needing to manage containers or Kubernetes clusters themselves. The service supports tool use — the ability of agents to call external functions and APIs — and manages the associated state across multiple conversation turns.
An important distinction from the related Agent Studio (formerly Vertex AI Agent Builder): Agent Studio focuses on low-code creation of RAG applications, search systems, and chatbots via a graphical interface. Deployments/Agent Runtime, on the other hand, is the programmatic runtime environment for code-first agents that execute complex workflows, orchestrate multiple tools, and integrate into existing systems.
The service offers resource controls (CPU, memory, concurrency limits), custom service accounts and agent identities, and monitoring via traces and logs. Integration with other Google Cloud services lets agents access enterprise data directly. Security features such as VPC Service Controls and IAM-based access control make the service production-ready for enterprise applications.
Integration with innFactory
As a certified Google Cloud partner, innFactory supports you in designing and operating AI agent architectures on Deployments/Agent Runtime — from choosing the right agent framework and integrating tools to production-ready deployment on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.
Contact us for a consultation on Deployments/Agent Runtime and autonomous AI systems.
Typical Use Cases
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of Google Cloud (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by Google Cloud.
