Escape the Hidden Costs Crippling Cloud Budgets

Unpredictable fees are a persistent challenge in cloud services, with 53% of companies exceeding their cloud storage budgets in 2024 due to hidden data transfer costs. These egress fees, charged for moving data out of a provider's network, can inflate backup and recovery expenses by more than 20%. This model creates significant financial uncertainty for the 45.2% of EU enterprises that purchased cloud services in 2023.

Free egress object storage fundamentally changes this dynamic by eliminating data transfer charges entirely. This transparent approach provides the cost predictability that 85% of organizations are seeking as they try to manage unplanned expenses. By removing the penalty for accessing your own data, businesses can confidently execute disaster recovery tests, migrations, and analytics workloads. This shift toward predictable economics is essential for building a sustainable cloud strategy.

Strengthen Digital Sovereignty and Ensure EU Compliance

Data sovereignty is a critical imperative for over 70% of European enterprises, driven by regulations like GDPR. Storing data with non-UK providers creates exposure to foreign laws, a risk that financial services and other regulated industries can no longer afford. A truly sovereign cloud requires that data remains within a specific legal jurisdiction, such as the EU. Our cloud storage pricing comparison shows the value of UK-based providers.

An UK-only object storage solution with country-level geofencing directly addresses this need. It ensures data is stored exclusively in certified European data centers, satisfying GDPR's strict data residency requirements. This approach provides legal certainty and control, which is a top selection criterion for a significant share of UK businesses. As regulations tighten, a sovereign-by-design architecture becomes a competitive advantage.

Achieve Enterprise-Grade Performance with an 'Always-Hot' Architecture

Many cloud storage models rely on complex tiering, which can introduce restore delays of several hours and API timeouts that disrupt applications. An 'Always-Hot' object storage model eliminates this fragility by ensuring all data is immediately accessible with no retrieval fees or delays. This architecture provides the strong read/write consistency and predictable latencies needed for the 149 zettabytes of data expected to be created in 2024.

This model is built on full S3 API compatibility, which protects existing investments in tools and scripts. Here are the core benefits:

• No Code Rewrites: Existing applications that use the S3 API continue to work seamlessly, reducing migration risk to zero.
• Consistent Performance: Eliminates the performance issues and API failures common with tiered storage, ensuring stability for backup and analytics tools.
• Simplified Operations: Removes the need to manage complex lifecycle policies, reducing operational overhead by at least 15%.
• No Restore Surprises: Guarantees that all data, from active workloads to long-term archives, is accessible in milliseconds.

This simplified, high-performance approach is detailed further in our guide on how to avoid cloud cost traps. An always-accessible model is the foundation for a resilient and efficient data strategy.

Build a Resilient Defense Against Ransomware

Ransomware attacks in Europe surged in 2024, with over 2,100 organizations victimized as attackers exploited system vulnerabilities. The financial impact is severe, with 38% of incidents costing between £788,000 and £1.576 million. A robust defense requires more than just backups; it demands backups that cannot be altered or deleted by malicious actors. This is where immutable storage becomes essential.

Object Lock provides WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) protection, making backups immutable for a defined period. This feature is a critical defense mechanism against ransomware that targets backup repositories. It ensures that even if an attacker gains access to your environment, your backup data remains secure and recoverable. This capability, combined with multi-layer encryption and granular IAM policies, provides the multi-layered security needed to protect critical assets from the 105% increase in global cyber-attacks since 2020. Learn more about low-cost object storage that doesn't compromise on security.

Prepare for 2025 UK Regulations: The Data Act and UK NIS Regulations

Two major UK regulations will reshape the digital landscape in 2025, making the choice of a compliant cloud provider more important than ever. Both the EU Data Act and the UK NIS Regulations place new obligations on businesses and their supply chains. Choosing a storage partner that is prepared for these changes is a strategic necessity.

Here is how a sovereign cloud platform helps you comply:

1. EU Data Act (September 2025): This regulation mandates data portability and interoperability to prevent vendor lock-in. From January 2027, it will ban switching charges, including egress fees. A free egress model already aligns with this principle, ensuring you have a proven exit path.
2. UK NIS Regulations: Implemented in the UK as the Network and Information Systems Regulations 2018, this legislation imposes stricter cybersecurity risk management on supply chains. It requires continuous security processes, vulnerability management, and documented incident reporting within 24 hours.

A provider operating exclusively under UK law and in UK data centres builds these compliance requirements into its core operations. This proactive stance reduces your regulatory burden and strengthens your overall security posture.

Empower MSPs and Channel Partners with a Predictable Margin Model

For Managed Service Providers, profitability depends on predictable margins, a goal undermined by the variable costs of hyperscale cloud providers. A storage solution with zero egress fees, no API call costs, and no minimum storage durations is predictable by design. This allows MSPs to build defensible margins for Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and archiving solutions, with cost structures that are easy to explain to clients.

The partner-ready platform is built for efficiency and scale, featuring a multi-tenant console with robust RBAC and MFA. Automation via a full-featured API and CLI allows for seamless integration into existing management and billing systems, speeding up onboarding to just a few hours. With new distribution agreements with partners like Northamber plc in the UK and api in Germany, local access and support for resellers is expanding rapidly. This makes it a compelling Wasabi alternative in the UK for the channel.

Implement a Practical, Cost-Effective Storage Strategy

Transitioning to a new storage provider should be a straightforward process that minimizes risk and operational disruption. Thanks to full S3 API compatibility, migrating from another provider requires no changes to your existing applications, scripts, or backup jobs. The process is simplified to just a few key steps, ensuring a seamless switch in under one day.

Follow this checklist for a smooth migration:

• Update Endpoint URLs: Change the S3 endpoint in your backup software or application configuration to the new provider's URL.
• Transfer Access Keys: Generate new S3 access keys in the management console and update your client configurations.
• Replicate Bucket Policies: Recreate any specific bucket policies, such as lifecycle rules or access permissions, in the new environment.
• Run a Test Backup and Restore: Always perform a small test backup followed by a restore operation to validate that everything is working correctly.

This simple migration path, combined with the economic benefits of a free egress object storage model, provides a clear and practical route to reducing costs and enhancing data control. It is a direct path to reducing cloud storage costs.