What AWS London Summit 2026 Means for Digital Archiving 

Last week, some of the IT team joined thousands of technology professionals at ExCeL London for AWS Summit 2026 - the UK's largest free cloud technology event. Between F1 race simulators and good food, we also found ourselves energised by what we heard. Here's what stood out, and why we think it matters for the future of digital archiving.

L to R: Dan, Oliver, Andy, Jodie

Agentic AI

Unlike chatbots and co-pilots, agentic AI systems can carry out multi-step tasks autonomously. Essentially, this means that they can plan, act, and adapt without needing a human to prompt every move.

For archiving, this is genuinely exciting. Imagine an AI agent that doesn't just search your digitised collection, but actively works through it. Theoretically it could be able to identify unnamed faces in photographs, cross-reference census records with registers, flag items that need conservation attention, or even automatically generate catalogue entries from handwritten documents.

We're not saying AI replaces the archivist however - far from it. Human expertise, context, and judgement remain irreplaceable, especially when you're dealing with unique, or sensitive heritage materials. But agentic AI such as this could free archivists from repetitive processing work and give them more time for the skilled and interpretive work that really matters.

Cloud Infrastructure

AWS Summit reinforced something we see every day; cloud infrastructure is the most reliable, scalable, and cost-effective way to store and serve large digital collections long-term. No matter the size of your collection, the cloud means it will be accessible, backed up, and protected from the kind of local hardware failures that have caused irreplaceable losses in the past.

For smaller organisations this is particularly important. You don't need a dedicated IT team or a server room to run a world-class digital archive. The infrastructure exists already, and it's just about knowing how to use it.

Data Sensitivity

One of the more nuanced conversations at this year's summit centred on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. This is essentially cloud infrastructure designed to ensure that data stays within European legal and regulatory boundaries, governed by European law.

For archives, this matters enormously. Many of the collections we work with contain sensitive personal data such as birth records, census information, medical histories and legal documents. The organisations that hold these records have a duty of care not just to preserve them, but to protect them. Questions like: where is this data stored?, who can access it?, and what happens to it in 50 years? are key ethical questions that need to have an answer.

If your organisation is in the process of choosing a digital preservation platform or cloud storage partner, data sovereignty should be on your checklist. We're happy to talk through what this means practically for your collection.

Scalability

One thing the summit underscored is how far cloud technology has come in removing the technical burden from organisations that aren't primarily technology businesses.

Serverless computing, automated backups, flexible storage tiers - these aren't things your archive manager needs to understand in detail. But they're the reason a digitised collection hosted in the cloud today can still be fully accessible and intact 50 years from now. That long-term reliability is something no physical hard drive or on-premise server can deliver.

What Does All This Mean for You?

The conversations at AWS Summit 2026 pointed to practical changes in how heritage organisations can store, protect, and make the most of their collections. Whether you're just beginning your digitisation journey or looking to future-proof an existing archive, the technology is more accessible than ever.

If any of what we've covered resonates with your own challenges, we'd love to have a conversation. Get in touch and let's talk about what the right digital preservation solution could look like for you.