ThinkOn and Preservica team up on sovereign digital preservation for Canadian government records

ThinkOn and Preservica have formed a strategic partnership to help Canadian public sector customers preserve long-term records on Canadian-owned infrastructure. The deal is aimed at lowering archive costs, supporting records stewardship and keeping government records under Canadian legal control.

Why it matters: - Canadian government records can now be preserved in a way that keeps archives on Canadian-owned infrastructure and under Canadian law. - The partnership is designed to help public sector records custodians cut costs while keeping long-term records usable for access requests, compliance and operations. - The setup also supports emerging AI initiatives by preserving records in a form that can still be found, read and used over time.

What happened: - ThinkOn, a Canadian-owned sovereign cloud provider, and Preservica, which offers AI-powered Active Digital Preservation, formed a strategic partnership. - The partnership gives Canadian government customers a sovereign option for long-term digital preservation. - Preservica’s preservation platform will run on ThinkOn’s Canadian-owned sovereign cloud. - ThinkOn and Preservica said they will bring the solution to market together, backed by ThinkOn’s network of more than 200 channel partners.

The details: - The solution is built to help public sector entities meet records stewardship obligations. - It supports automated transfer to Library and Archives Canada. - It maintains chain of custody and authenticity. - It protects records from file format obsolescence. - It automatically transforms obsolete files into usable formats. - It is intended to help move inactive files, folders, lists and libraries into the archive in a few clicks. - It can consolidate records from legacy system migrations into the archive. - It allows users to continue using existing workflows to access and process records. - It is meant to help teams manage long-term records more effectively without adding new complexity. - Preservica’s Active Digital Preservation platform is designed for the long-term security, availability, integrity and privacy of digital records. - Preservica’s Preserve365 embeds Active Digital Preservation into enterprise content management systems. - That setup lets records be archived, preserved and retrieved within existing workflows. - Preserved records can also serve as a foundation for AI initiatives. - The partnership uses ThinkOn’s federally cleared, sovereign Canadian cloud. - The cloud arrangement is meant to let institutions archive records from existing ECM and legacy systems. - ThinkOn said the records archive would be accessible only through Canadian legal process, not foreign directives.

Between the lines: - The deal responds to a common government problem: legacy systems can make old records expensive to store and hard to use. - The partnership also reflects growing concern that data sovereignty depends on who owns and operates the infrastructure, not just where the data sits. - Preservica already works with government archives, departments and agencies in Canada, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia. - For Canadian agencies, the main shift is that modern digital preservation no longer has to mean surrendering jurisdictional control.

What's next: - Canadian public sector entities can now combine Preservica’s preservation tools with ThinkOn’s sovereign cloud to archive records under Canadian control. - The partnership is aimed at supporting citizen services, ATI and FOI responses, and future AI use cases. - The companies will market the offering together through ThinkOn’s partner channel. - Government of Canada departments are expected to use the platform to retire costly legacy storage and manual record handling while keeping records on Canadian soil.

The bottom line: - The partnership is a bet that Canadian governments can reduce archive costs, preserve record usability and keep sensitive records sovereign at the same time.