Eliminate Budget Volatility by Removing Hidden Fees

The primary driver of cloud budget overruns is pricing models designed around variable fees. Egress charges, API call costs, and minimum storage durations create significant financial uncertainty for over 70% of European businesses. For a business needing to restore 100 TB of data, these fees can add thousands of euros to a single monthly bill. This model creates a powerful financial barrier to switching providers, effectively locking customers into a single ecosystem.

A transparent pricing model eliminates these punitive charges entirely. By offering zero egress fees, no API call costs, and no minimum storage durations, businesses regain full control over their expenditures. This approach makes total cost of ownership (TCO) predictable down to the last gigabyte. It transforms cloud storage from a variable operational expense into a fixed, manageable budget line item. This shift toward economic clarity is now supported by new regulations designed to protect customers.

Align with EU Regulations to De-Risk Your Data Strategy

The European regulatory landscape is actively working to dismantle vendor lock-in. The EU Data Act, with its provisions taking full effect from September 2025, mandates data portability and will prohibit all switching charges, including egress fees, by January 2027. This makes adopting a zero-egress model not just a smart financial decision but a forward-looking compliance strategy. Providers built on open standards are already aligned with these principles.

Furthermore, the NIS-2 Directive raises the bar for cybersecurity across critical sectors, demanding robust supply-chain assurance and continuous security processes. Choosing a cloud provider that bakes these requirements into its core operations is essential for compliance. An EU-native provider offers two key advantages:

• It ensures data is governed exclusively by EU law, avoiding CLOUD Act exposure.
• It operates within certified European data centers, simplifying GDPR adherence.

This regulatory alignment provides legal certainty and turns compliance from a burden into a competitive advantage. With these frameworks in place, the focus can shift to architectural resilience.

Boost Resilience with Sovereign-by-Design Architecture

True digital sovereignty is achieved when data is subject only to the laws of the jurisdiction where it is stored. Storing data with a European provider in EU-only data centers is the most direct path to achieving this, a priority for 84% of EU organizations. This strategy ensures data residency and provides country-level geofencing, keeping sensitive workloads within predefined regions under strict EU rules. This is a critical requirement for regulated industries like financial services.

An architecture built for sovereignty also eliminates single points of failure. By using multi-layer encryption and an "Always-Hot" storage model, all data remains immediately accessible. This contrasts sharply with complex tiered models, where restore delays and hidden fees can disrupt operations during a critical recovery event. The zero-egress fee model ensures that accessing your data for disaster recovery never comes with a financial penalty. This resilient foundation is critical for protecting against modern threats.

Strengthen Ransomware Protection with Immutable Storage

Ransomware remains a top threat, making immutable backups a non-negotiable part of any modern data protection strategy. Using S3-compatible Object Lock technology, organizations can make their backup data unchangeable for a defined period. This ensures that even if primary systems are compromised, a clean, uncorrupted copy of the data is available for recovery. This capability is a core pillar of a 3-2-1 backup strategy.

Effective ransomware defense requires more than just technology; it demands robust access controls. A compliant cloud platform provides Identity and Access Management (IAM) with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC). These features allow for granular, policy-driven permissions that map to real organizational structures. Secure defaults and support for external identity providers via SAML/OIDC further strengthen the security posture, ensuring only authorized personnel can manage critical backup and archive data. This leads to a more robust and auditable security framework.

Maintain Operational Continuity with Full S3 Compatibility

Migrating to a new cloud provider should not require re-engineering existing applications and workflows. Full S3-API compatibility ensures that all current tools, scripts, and applications continue to work without modification. This protects past investments and dramatically reduces migration risk and complexity. The goal is a seamless transition, not a costly rewrite project.

An enterprise-ready S3 implementation goes beyond basic operations. It must support advanced capabilities to keep data pipelines running smoothly. Key features include:

1. Object Versioning: Protect against accidental deletions or overwrites by keeping multiple versions of an object.
2. Lifecycle Management: Automate data transition and expiration policies without incurring hidden fees.
3. Event Notifications: Trigger automated workflows in response to object-level operations.
4. Strong Read/Write Consistency: Ensure data integrity for mixed workloads, from millions of small files to large archives.

This level of compatibility, combined with a predictable cloud pricing model, ensures that both technical and financial operations remain stable. This stability is especially valuable for channel partners.

Enable Predictable Margins for MSPs and Channel Partners

For Managed Service Providers (MSPs), resellers, and system integrators, margin predictability is everything. A cloud storage model with zero egress or API fees is predictable by design, allowing partners to build BaaS and archiving services with stable, defensible margins. This removes the risk of a client's unexpected data restore request erasing the profitability of an account. It simplifies quoting and billing for hundreds of partners.

A partner-ready platform must also provide the tools for efficient management and scale. A multi-tenant console with robust RBAC and MFA is essential for securely managing multiple client environments. Automation via a comprehensive API and CLI allows for seamless integration into existing provisioning and reporting systems, speeding up onboarding. Recent distribution agreements with partners like api in Germany and Northamber plc in the UK demonstrate growing channel momentum and local access for resellers across Europe. This ecosystem provides the tools for partners to build sovereign and profitable cloud services.

Implement a Future-Proof Cloud Storage Strategy

Adopting a transparent and sovereign cloud storage solution is a practical, three-step process. First, assess your current data landscape, identifying workloads that require strict EU data residency and those incurring high egress costs. Second, leverage S3 compatibility to conduct a pilot migration, testing existing backup jobs and archival scripts to validate performance and functionality. Third, execute the full migration, using the provider's tools and support to ensure a smooth transition without operational disruption.

This approach not only addresses immediate cost and compliance pains but also preserves long-term freedom of action. By building on open standards and ensuring data portability, you avoid future vendor lock-in. An "Always-Hot" architecture simplifies operations, strengthens your ransomware posture, and delivers the predictable cloud costs that modern enterprises demand. The next step is to see it in action.