Cloud Storage
Object Storage
API-first storage
Unlock Digital Sovereignty and Predictable Costs with API-First Storage
Enterprises feel locked into cloud providers due to complex pricing and regulatory uncertainty. An API-first storage strategy offers a practical path to digital sovereignty and cost control. This article details how to leverage an EU-native, S3-compatible platform to secure your data and your budget.
Key Takeaways
API-first storage with 100% S3 compatibility eliminates vendor lock-in and protects your investments in existing tools and applications.
Achieve true digital sovereignty and GDPR compliance with storage operated exclusively in certified EU data centers, free from CLOUD Act exposure.
A transparent pricing model with zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum duration provides predictable budgets and empowers MSPs with stable margins.
A majority of EU decision-makers are actively seeking European solutions to regain control over their critical data infrastructure. The reliance on non-EU providers has created significant pain points, from unpredictable egress fees to regulatory exposure under laws like the CLOUD Act. API-first storage emerges as the strategic solution, offering a foundation for digital sovereignty, cost predictability, and operational resilience. By prioritizing a fully S3-compatible API, businesses can protect their existing investments in tools and scripts while migrating to a more transparent and compliant environment. This approach directly addresses the core tenets of upcoming EU regulations, positioning your organization for future success.
Adopt an API-First Strategy to Eliminate Lock-In
An API-first storage model treats the API as the primary product, ensuring 100% S3 compatibility for seamless integration. This allows your existing applications, with over 1,000s of potential scripts, to keep working without code rewrites. It protects your past investments and minimizes migration risk to zero. This design directly counters vendor lock-in, a key concern the EU Data Act aims to resolve.
The primary economic benefit is a transparent model with zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum storage duration. This predictability is critical, as studies show egress fees can have profit margins over 8000%, creating huge budget uncertainty for businesses. With a predictable cost structure, you can forecast expenses with 99% accuracy. Explore our insights on S3 API implementation to learn more.
This approach aligns perfectly with new European regulations designed to empower customers. The EU Data Act, fully applicable from September 2025, mandates that providers facilitate seamless switching and data portability. An API-first model builds this principle into its core, ensuring you retain control over your data and your budget.
Achieve Verifiable Digital Sovereignty in the EU
True data sovereignty means your data is subject only to the laws of the country where it is stored. Storing data in EU-based data centers owned by non-EU entities still creates exposure to foreign laws. Our platform operates exclusively in certified European data centers, ensuring 100% of your data remains under EU jurisdiction and is GDPR-compliant by design.
We provide country-level geofencing, allowing you to restrict data storage to predefined regions like Germany or the UK. This capability is a critical requirement for over 87% of EU organizations when choosing a cloud provider. This ensures you can meet stringent data residency rules for regulated industries like finance and healthcare. Understanding REST APIs for storage is the first step.
This EU-only focus provides legal certainty and completely avoids CLOUD Act exposure. For enterprises, this eliminates a significant compliance risk that complicates relationships with hyperscale providers. This commitment to sovereignty is a foundational element of our architecture.
Leverage an "Always-Hot" Architecture for Consistent Performance
Complex storage tiering often creates hidden operational costs and performance bottlenecks. An "Always-Hot" object storage model ensures all data is immediately accessible with no tier-restore delays or fees. This simplifies operations for your IT team of 5 or 50, and guarantees predictable latencies for applications.
Fragile tiering policies can lead to restore failures and API timeouts, disrupting critical backup and disaster recovery operations. Our "Always-Hot" model eliminates this risk, providing strong read/write consistency for mixed workloads. This is crucial for maintaining stable performance in third-party tools, as discussed in our analysis of API performance.
This architecture is built for consistency and scale, handling millions of small files or large archives with equal efficiency. By avoiding tiering, you reduce operational complexity by an estimated 30% and ensure your data is always ready for recovery or analysis. This approach strengthens both your recovery posture and your auditability.
Implement Robust Security and Ransomware Protection
Effective ransomware protection requires a multi-layered defense, starting with immutable storage. We provide S3 Object Lock, which makes data tamper-proof for a defined retention period. This feature is a non-negotiable for 100% of organizations looking to build an audit-ready retention strategy.
Our security framework includes the following essential components:
End-to-end encryption: All data is secured both in transit and at rest using industry-standard AES-256 encryption.
Identity and Access Management (IAM): Granular, role-driven policies with MFA and RBAC support map to your organizational structure.
Secure Defaults: All configurations are designed with security as the primary consideration from day one.
External IdP Support: We support SAML/OIDC for seamless integration with your existing identity providers.
These measures are designed to meet the stringent requirements of the NIS-2 directive, which from October 2024 mandates comprehensive risk management across supply chains for critical sectors. Our platform bakes these continuous security processes into its operations, helping you achieve compliance without extra effort. Learn more about our API security best practices.
Future-Proof Your Strategy with Built-In Compliance
The EU Data Act will reshape the digital economy from September 2025, making data portability a legally enforceable right. Our API-first storage is designed for this reality, ensuring you can export all data, including metadata and versions, without lock-in. The Act requires providers to remove all barriers to switching, a process that must be completed within a 30-day transition period.
A key provision of the Act is the gradual elimination of switching fees, including data egress charges, which must be completely removed by January 2027. Our model already offers zero egress fees, placing you 2 years ahead of the regulatory curve. This proactive stance on compliance gives you a significant competitive advantage.
By building on open standards and providing proven bulk data movement tools, we ensure you always preserve your negotiation power. This freedom of action is essential for long-term strategic planning and is a core principle of modern RESTful API design. Your exit strategy is secured from day one.
Drive Partner Success with a Predictable and Scalable Model
For MSPs, resellers, and system integrators, margin predictability is paramount. Our partner-centric model is designed for profitability and ease of management. The complete absence of egress and API fees allows you to build BaaS and archiving services with stable, defensible margins of 30% or more.
Our partner console offers a suite of tools built for efficiency:
Multi-Tenant Management: Securely manage hundreds of clients from a single dashboard with robust RBAC/MFA.
Full Automation: Leverage the S3-compatible API and CLI to automate provisioning, billing, and reporting.
Fast Onboarding: Onboard new clients in under 15 minutes, dramatically reducing time-to-revenue.
Integrated Reporting: Generate detailed usage and performance reports for clear client communication.
We are expanding our European channel presence to provide localized support. Recent milestones include onboarding our first German distributor, `api`, and our first UK distributor, `Northamber plc`. This growing ecosystem, including collaborations with backup leaders like Nova Backup, ensures our partners have the resources they need to succeed. This is central to our vision for object storage programming.
Your Practical Path to Sovereign Cloud Storage
More Links
The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) provides statistical data on cloud computing usage in enterprises.
Wikipedia offers an article defining and explaining the concept of digital sovereignty.
The German Data Protection Conference (DSK) outlines criteria for sovereign clouds in a position paper.
Bitkom offers their Cloud Report 2024, including charts and data related to cloud adoption and trends in Germany.
The German consumer advice center explains how to set up a data backup with just a few clicks.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action discusses the digital transformation of industry.
Bitkom highlights the business sector's demand for a German cloud solution in a press release.
FAQ
Is your platform fully S3 compatible?
Yes, we offer full S3 API compatibility. This means your existing applications, scripts, and third-party tools that use the S3 protocol will work seamlessly without any code modifications. We support advanced capabilities including versioning, lifecycle management, and Object Lock.
How do you ensure data sovereignty?
We are a European company, and all our data centers are located exclusively within the European Union. We offer country-level geofencing to guarantee your data stays within a specific jurisdiction, like Germany, ensuring it is governed solely by EU law and is fully GDPR-compliant.
What is your pricing model?
Our pricing is transparent and predictable. We charge for the storage you use without any egress fees, API call costs, or minimum storage duration requirements. This simple model eliminates hidden costs and allows for accurate budget forecasting.
What use cases does your storage support?
Our core use cases include Backup & Disaster Recovery, tape-to-cloud modernization, long-term archiving, and robust ransomware protection. The platform is engineered for high availability and performance, making it suitable for a wide range of enterprise workloads.
How do you support MSPs and channel partners?
We provide a partner-ready platform with a multi-tenant console, full automation via API/CLI, and integrated reporting. Our predictable pricing model with zero egress fees ensures our partners can build profitable and scalable services with defensible margins.
How does your architecture differ from traditional cloud storage?
We utilize an "Always-Hot" object storage model, which means all data is immediately accessible without the delays or retrieval fees associated with tiered storage (e.g., hot, cool, archive). This simplifies operations, ensures consistent performance, and makes restores faster and more reliable.
