AWS UKI partner boss: Orchestration, agentic AI and economic impact will define 2026 growth strategy

Speaking at the 2026 AWS Summit London, Joe Carroll reveals his message to partners, where they should invest, and cloud sovereignty concerns

AWS UK and Ireland’s partner leadership says 2026 for the hyperscaler will be defined by the need to better “orchestrate” a growing ecosystem of partners.

Speaking with CRN at the AWS Summit 2026 in London, UKI director for partners Joe Carroll said AWS’s priority is ensuring the “right partner combination” is deployed at each stage of a customer’s journey, from early strategy through to industry-specific delivery.

He revealed AWS is expanding rather than reducing its partner base, pointing to rising demand in data, AI and agentic solutions, alongside ongoing needs in migration, modernisation and industry-focused cloud services.

Carroll sat down with CRN to give his top message to channel firms, priority partner profile, and cloud sovereignty.

In case you missed it, read everything partners need to know from this year’s AWS Summit London here.

What’s top of mind for you in 2026?

“The first one is the orchestration.

“We have a huge ecosystem that needs to be brought together with a sense of cohesion to a customer.

“My role is to make sure we orchestrate in any given customer the right partner combination based on a customer's requirements, and make sure that depending on what stage of an engagement we sit the right partner is in there for the right role.

“Any large scale transformation where customers are looking to reinvent to have more of an agentic organisation, often we find some of the advisory firms start that conversation, and once they've got lots of initiatives from the CFO or the CMO office, then some of those projects can then be handed to another specialist industry partner.

“So orchestrating that ecosystem to make sure we have a high economic impact in the UK.”

Are you looking to reduce or grow the number of partners AWS works with in the UK?

“Grow.

“We're trying to democratise access to our channel partners. We've got Partner Central, which is using agentic techniques to allow customers to identify the right partner for the right job that needs to be done.

“We know there's some super innovative partners that can transform the way some of the tasks are done, and often they're partnering with other partners.

“So I think it's important that we continue to offer choice to our customers. And we have no plans to shorten our list of partners, it's the opposite, providing more choices for our customers.

“In any given industry, there are specific requirements around regulation, sovereignty, supply chain, financial services in terms of governance and security. We work with partners that neatly fit into those buckets.”

What partner profile does this apply to?

“The ones that are embracing the huge buckets of value. So I think about data, AI, and agentic, so those expertise that can flow down into industry and horizontal conversations with our customers. So it's not just an industry thing. It could be something that cuts across.

“Outside of that you've got the migration and modernisation partners who are laser focused on finding migration opportunities and moving them into the cloud and helping customers to realise the benefits.

“The third bucket is industry solutions. Like I mentioned, the supply chain, or telemetry across a network, or governance within the financial services space.

“And then the fourth one, which is huge, is this co-sell motion. We've got customers that become partners, like Anthropic, for example.

“So our customers can spin off from not just being a customer to then becoming a partner where we can then co-sell in the market together, and that pulls through revenue growth for them, and, of course, the use of our services.”

In which areas would you most like to see your partners invest?

“We're now seeing customer after customer see the positive economic impact of using agentic solutions deployed at scale, and also in more complex workflows.

“If you think about partners that can go into a customer and say, ‘We've got a clean sheet here. Just rethink how you run and operate your business in a more nimble, cost efficient way. So you can spin off and take on adjacent markets to grow your business.’

“Partners that can deeply assess a customer's environment from a technology point of view, but also where they’re getting their revenue streams from is super important, because we can then lead with those agentic solutions.”

Cloud sovereignty is a growing topic. Is this on your radar? Have you had partners coming to you about this?

“It's on the radar.

“Partners tend to say they want to focus on three things and do them very well.

“For some, that’s data and AI, migration modernisation.

“There are some partners that would say it's security, sovereign as well as industry.

“When they lean heavily into one of those buckets of strategic value to them and to our customers, they'll then lean into the story around how they can work with AWS’ sovereign cloud team to look at those discrete cases where customers are saying they need a sovereign solution.

“But it's not coming up much at all. The UK market is quite different versus other parts of Europe.”

What’s your message to AWS partners?

“Think big to rethink how work gets done with customers to keep the human in the loop in the technologies to thrive within the digital ecosystem.

“We've got an incredible opportunity to lift the UK economy in terms of productivity. So when partners lean into the message of going to customers to say, ‘This is a point in time where you can reimagine and rethink how you run and operate your business’, and they learn about the services that we've now got from Kiro to Transform.

“So the message is, if you can take those technologies to customers to rethink how they run and operate their businesses, we can actually lift the UK economy as a collective group, because there are thousands and thousands of partners that are all sharing that mission.”

What’s one goal you’d like to achieve by the end of 2026?

“These economic impacting stories.

“How do we make sure partners can say they’ve been able to rethink how a customer runs and operates their business, which has led to a product productivity game to a revenue growth opportunity.

“Having a situation where we've got case after case after case, because they're coming through thick and fast right now, so I think being in a position where that's systematic across all the partners would be magical.”