$11.4M Saved Renegotiating a Google Cloud Enterprise Agreement

The client had signed a $34M 3-year Committed Use Discount (CUD) structure with Google Cloud, initially driven by aggressive discounts tied to exclusivity provisions. By month 18, actual consumption was tracking 28% below the committed baseline — creating a projected $9.6M shortfall charge at the end of the term.

Google's account team had begun discussing the shortfall in renewal planning meetings, using it as leverage to push the client toward additional AI/ML services from Google's Vertex AI platform. The situation was compounded by the fact that the client had no multi-cloud provisions and faced punitive egress fees if they wanted to migrate workloads to AWS — effectively trapping the company within Google's ecosystem.

This dynamic created a precarious situation: either the company would accept the $9.6M shortfall penalty, or it would be forced to adopt expensive new AI services to "fill the gap" — services that may not have aligned with their technical roadmap or budget priorities.

• CUD restructured from $34M to $22.6M (-$11.4M, -34%) — eliminating the projected shortfall charge
• Quarterly consumption review mechanism inserted — the first time Google had agreed to this dynamic adjustment model for this client
• Egress fees capped at $0.01/GB for migrations to any other cloud platform within 5 years
• Data portability clause requiring 90-day assisted migration support — giving the client a realistic pathway to exit if needed
• Multi-cloud addendum allowing up to 40% of workloads on non-GCP infrastructure without penalty
• Vertex AI piloting provisions — 6-month paid pilot before any AI workload commitment
• Removed exclusivity language from the original contract — restoring the client's negotiating flexibility