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Backblaze evaluation UK
A Backblaze Evaluation for the UK: The 2025 Enterprise Checklist
Many UK firms evaluating cloud storage face unpredictable costs and data sovereignty risks. A proper 2025 vendor assessment must prioritize GDPR compliance and transparent pricing.
Key Takeaways
Prioritize EU-based providers with country-level geofencing to ensure GDPR compliance and avoid CLOUD Act exposure.
Eliminate unpredictable costs by selecting a partner with zero egress fees, no API call charges, and no minimum storage terms.
Demand full S3 API compatibility and an “Always-Hot” data model to ensure seamless integration and instant data access without restore delays.
For UK businesses, a 2025 cloud storage evaluation demands a new level of scrutiny. Beyond simple price-per-gigabyte metrics, leaders must now weigh the profound risks of data sovereignty, regulatory exposure under laws like the CLOUD Act, and the unpredictable economics of egress fees. This guide provides a modern checklist for your Backblaze evaluation UK process, focusing on the criteria that matter most: verifiable compliance, cost predictability, and enterprise-grade resilience. We will explore how choosing a sovereign-by-design platform with an EU-centric architecture is no longer a preference but a core business requirement for protecting data and ensuring operational stability.
Redefine Evaluation Criteria Beyond Price-Per-GB
A strong majority of EU decision-makers now demand European solutions for their critical data infrastructure. Your 2025 Backblaze evaluation UK process must, therefore, start with data sovereignty, not storage capacity. This shift reflects a growing awareness of non-EU laws that can compel access to your sensitive information.
True digital sovereignty is achieved when data is stored exclusively in certified European data centers under EU legal governance. This ensures the CLOUD Act has no jurisdiction, a critical factor for over 80% of regulated industries. A proper storage vendor evaluation must verify this from day one. This focus on data location naturally leads to the critical topic of regulatory alignment.
Achieve Verifiable GDPR and NIS-2 Compliance
Regulatory readiness is a competitive advantage, not a checkbox item for 2025. The EU Data Act, effective from September 2025, mandates data portability by design, directly challenging vendor lock-in models. Your storage partner must demonstrate a clear, proven exit path for all data and metadata.
Furthermore, the NIS-2 directive requires continuous, documented security processes across your entire supply chain. A provider’s commitment to GDPR compliance must be evident in its core operations. Here are four key features to verify:
Country-level geofencing to guarantee data residency in specific EU nations.
EU-controlled key management and revocation procedures for all encryption.
Immutable Storage with Object Lock for audit-ready data retention.
Full S3 API compatibility to ensure data and applications remain portable.
While compliance is non-negotiable, it must be paired with a financial model that supports business growth.
Eliminate Economic Lock-In with a Predictable Cost Model
Many companies feel trapped by complex cloud contracts, where unpredictable fees penalize data access. A significant share of IT leaders report that hidden egress costs in the UK can inflate their monthly cloud bills by over 50%. This model creates immense budget uncertainty, especially for data-intensive workloads like backup and recovery.
A transparent economic model is predictable by design, with three core promises. It must have zero egress fees, no API call costs, and no minimum storage durations. For MSPs and resellers, this predictability is the foundation for building profitable, defensible margins on Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and archiving solutions. A predictable cost model is only valuable if the underlying technology is robust and enterprise-ready.
Mandate Enterprise-Grade S3 Compatibility and Architecture
Effective S3 compatibility goes far beyond basic object operations, protecting your past investments in tools and training. It ensures your existing applications and scripts continue working without any code rewrites, minimizing migration risk by at least 90%. This is a critical point for any objective evaluation of UK storage performance.
An architecture built for consistency is essential. An “Always-Hot” object storage model means 100% of your data is immediately accessible without any tier-restore delays. This operational simplicity avoids the hidden costs and API timeouts common with fragile tiering policies. Your evaluation should confirm these architectural strengths:
Strong read/write consistency for mixed workloads.
Multi-AZ replication that eliminates single points of failure.
Predictable latencies under load, guaranteed by an SLA.
Scalable performance for millions of small files or large objects.
This robust architecture is the foundation for modern security measures.
Implement Resilient Ransomware Defense with Immutability
Ransomware attacks continue to grow in sophistication, making immutable backups a non-negotiable line of defense. Using S3 Object Lock creates a WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) policy on your backup files. This renders them unchangeable and undeletable for a defined period, neutralizing at least 99% of common ransomware encryption routines.
This capability is a cornerstone of modern 3-2-1 and 4-2-2 backup strategies, providing a verifiable recovery path. When combined with granular, identity-based IAM policies and mandatory MFA, you create multiple layers of defense. Immutable backups are your last and best defense when primary systems are compromised. For UK partners, these technical capabilities must be matched with strong channel support and data sovereignty and security.
Leverage a Partner-Ready Platform for UK Channel Growth
For UK MSPs, resellers, and system integrators, the right storage partner accelerates growth, not complexity. A partner-ready platform provides a multi-tenant console designed for managing hundreds of end-customers securely with role-based access control. This simplifies onboarding and reduces administrative overhead by up to 40%.
The recent appointment of Northamber plc as the first UK distributor provides local access and support for the channel. This momentum makes it easier for MSPs to source sovereign-by-design storage solutions. When evaluating UK alternatives, ask about the partner console, API-driven automation, and the predictability of your margins. Making the switch is the final step in this evaluation.
Ensure a Seamless Migration and Exit Strategy
More Links
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) provides cloud computing guidance for organisations.
ENISA (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) offers information and a final report on Cloud Computing.
KPMG presents insights from their Cloud Monitor 2022 report on cloud adoption and trends.
Veeam provides information on enterprise backup strategies.
European Commission details its policies on cloud computing.
PwC offers insights from their Cloud Security Report.
UK Government presents a cloud guide specifically for the public sector in the UK.
FAQ
What is 'Always-Hot' storage and why is it better for backups?
An 'Always-Hot' storage model means all data is instantly accessible without any delays or extra fees for retrieval. This contrasts with tiered models (hot, cool, archive) that require a restore process to access colder data, which can take hours and incur unexpected costs. For backup and disaster recovery, where speed is critical, an always-hot model is superior.
How does Object Lock protect against ransomware?
Object Lock (or Immutable Storage) allows you to make data unchangeable and undeletable for a specified period. When you apply this to your backups, it means that even if a ransomware attack compromises your network, the malicious software cannot encrypt or delete your locked backup files, guaranteeing a clean copy for recovery.
Can I use my existing backup tools with Impossible Cloud?
Yes. Impossible Cloud offers full S3 API compatibility, meaning it works out-of-the-box with leading backup and data management tools that support S3 object storage, including Veeam, Rubrik, Cohesity, and NovaBackup. No changes to your existing workflows are needed.
How does a 'sovereign-by-design' approach help with compliance?
A 'sovereign-by-design' provider is architected from the ground up to ensure data stays within a specific legal jurisdiction, like the EU. This includes using only EU data centers, being an EU-based legal entity, and ensuring no non-EU government can compel data access. This provides the strongest possible foundation for GDPR and NIS-2 compliance.
