Google and AWS split the AI agent stack between control and execution
The era of enterprises stitching together prompt chains and shadow agents is nearing its end as more options for orchestrating complex multi-agent systems emerge. As organizations move AI agents into production, the question remains: "how will we manage them?" Google and Amazon Web Services offer fundamentally different answers, illustrating a split in the AI stack. Google's approach is to run agentic management on the system layer, while AWS's harness method sets up in the execution layer. The debate on how to manage and control gained new energy this past month as competing companies released or updated their agent builder platforms-Anthropic with the new Claude Managed Agents and OpenAI with enhancements to the Agents SDK -giving developer teams options for managing agents. AWS with new capabilities added to Bedrock AgentCore is optimizing for velocity-relying on harnesses to bring agents to product faster-while still offering identity and tool management. Meanwhile, Google's Gemini Enterprise adopts a governance-focused approach using a Kubernetes-style control plane. Each method offers a glimpse into how agents move from short-burst task helpers to longer-running entities within a workflow. Upgrades and umbrellas To understand where each company stands, here's what's actually new. Google released a new version of Gemini Enterprise, bringing its enterprise AI agent offerings-Gemini Enterprise Platform and Gemini Enterprise Application-under one umbrella. The company has rebranded Vertex AI as Gemini Enterprise Platform , though it insists that, aside from the name change and new features, it's still fundamentally the same interface. "We want to provide a platform and a front door for companies to have access to all the AI systems and tools that Google provides," Maryam Gholami, senior director, product management for Gemini Enterprise, told VentureBeat in an interview. "The way you can think about it is that the Gemini Enterprise Application is built on top of the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and the security and governance tools are all provided for free as part of Gemini Enterprise Application subscription." On the other hand, AWS added a new managed agent harness to Bedrock Agentcore . The company said in a press release shared with VentureBeat that the harness "replaces upfront build with a config-based starting point powered by Strands Agents, AWS's open source agent framework." Users define what the agent does, the model it uses and the tools it calls, and AgentCore does the work to stitch all of that together to run the agent. Agents are now becoming systems The shift toward stateful, long-running autonomous agents has forced a rethink of how AI systems behave. As agents move from short-lived tasks to long-running workflows, a new class of failure is emerging: state drift. As agents continue operating, they accumulate state-memory, too, responses and evolving context. Over time, that state becomes outdated. Data sources change, or tools can return conflicting responses. But the agent becomes more vulnerable to inconsistencies and becomes less truthful. Agent reliability becomes a systems problem, and managing that drift may need more than faster execution; it may require visibility and control. It's this failure point that platforms like Gemini Enterprise and AgentCore try to prevent. Though this shift is already happening, Gholami admitted that customers will dictate how they want to run and control any long-running agent. "We are going to learn a lot from customers where they would be using long-running agents, where they just assign a task to these autonomous agents to just go ahead and do," Gholami said. "Of course, there are tricks and balances to get right and the agent may come back and ask for more input." The new AI stack What's becoming increasingly clear is that the AI stack is separating into distinct layers, solving different problems. AWS and, to a certain extent, Anthropic and OpenAI, optimize for faster deployment. Claude Managed Agents abstracts much of the backend work for standing up an agent, while the Agents SDK now includes support for sandboxes and a ready-made harness. These approaches aim to lower the barrier to getting agents up and running. Google offers a centralized control panel to manage identity, enforce policies and monitor long-running behaviors. Enterprises likely need both. As some practitioners see it, their businesses have to have a serious conversation on how much risk they are willing to take. "The main takeaway for enterprise technology leaders considering these technologies at the moment may be formulated this way: while the agent harness vs. runtime question is often perceived as build vs. buy, this is primarily a matter of risk management. If you can afford to run your agents through a third-party runtime because they do not affect your revenue streams, that is okay. On the contrary, in the context of more critical processes, the latter option will be the only one to consider from a business perspective," Rafael Sarim Oezdemir, head of growth at EZContacts, told VentureBeat in an email. Iterating quickly lets teams experiment and discover what agents can do, while centralized control adds a layer of trust. What enterprises need is to ensure they are not locked into systems designed purely for a single way of executing agents.