If you have ever wanted to ship an AI-powered application without managing GPUs, model servers, or scaling infrastructure yourself, this guide is for you.
Managed inference simply means letting a cloud provider run the AI model for you: you send a request, the platform handles the compute, and you get a response back. On Google Cloud, the cleanest way to do this today is to pair the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI) with Google Cloud Run, dividing responsibilities between the two services. The Agent Platform serves as the orchestration and intelligence engine, while Cloud Run hosts your custom application logic, front-end UIs, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.
By the end of this article, you will be able to:
Explain the hybrid architecture and why each layer exists
Define an AI agent in code using the Agent Development Kit (ADK)
