Cloud Storage
Archival Storage
Backblaze storage flexibility
Beyond Tiers: How to Achieve True Storage Flexibility and Cost Predictability
Are complex storage tiers and surprise egress fees undermining your budget and recovery strategy? A different architectural approach delivers 100% data availability without financial penalties. Discover how an “Always-Hot” model provides superior storage flexibility.
Key Takeawys
True storage flexibility comes from an “Always-Hot” architecture that makes 100% of data instantly accessible, eliminating the delays and complexities of tiered storage.
A predictable economic model with zero egress fees, no API call costs, and no minimum storage durations can cut cloud storage bills by preventing the surprise charges that consume up to 50% of budgets.
Storing data exclusively in EU data centers under a sovereign-by-design provider ensures GDPR compliance and avoids risks associated with foreign laws like the US CLOUD Act.
Many enterprise IT leaders find that traditional tiered storage introduces significant operational friction. The promise of lower costs through complex lifecycle policies often evaporates when urgent data restores are delayed by hours or API calls fail, impacting business continuity for 60% of teams. True storage flexibility is not about managing multiple tiers; it is about having all data immediately accessible, all the time. This approach, known as an “Always-Hot” model, eliminates restore delays and simplifies architecture, directly addressing the 50% of cloud storage budgets currently lost to unpredictable fees in Europe. By prioritizing instant access and predictable costs, organizations can build a more resilient and sovereign data strategy.
Rethink Flexibility: The Limits of Tiered Storage
Traditional cloud storage presents flexibility as a choice between performance and cost, spread across multiple tiers. Yet, this model is often brittle; 45% of data access patterns change unexpectedly, clashing with rigid lifecycle policies. This can lead to restore delays of several hours, failed backups, and surprise retrieval fees that negate any planned savings. True storage flexibility, and indeed any storage flexibility, should mean operational simplicity, not constant management of data temperature.
An “Always-Hot” object storage model challenges this paradigm by ensuring 100% of data is immediately accessible. This architecture eliminates the operational complexity tied to tiering, providing consistent, low-latency performance for every file, from active workloads to long-term archives. For businesses, this means a 30% reduction in storage management overhead and the complete removal of tier-based API timeouts. This approach ensures your S3-compatible tools always function as expected.
By abandoning fragile tiering, organizations gain a significant competitive advantage. All data, including backups and archives, remains active and ready for analytics, compliance audits, or disaster recovery scenarios without any rehydration delays. This shift from tiered complexity to instant access forms the foundation of a more resilient and efficient data infrastructure.
Achieve Predictable Economics with a Zero-Fee Model
Unpredictable costs are a primary challenge for IT leaders, with egress and API call fees consuming up to 50% of cloud storage budgets in Europe. These variable charges penalize data usage and create significant forecasting difficulties, hindering innovation for over 55% of European organizations. A predictable storage model eliminates these punitive fees entirely, offering transparent pricing based solely on the volume of data stored.
This model is built on three core principles to ensure financial clarity:
No Egress Fees: Move data freely to other clouds or on-premises systems without financial penalty, avoiding vendor lock-in.
No API Call Costs: Run applications, scripts, and third-party tools without worrying about per-request charges, which can save 15% on monthly bills.
No Minimum Storage Duration: Store data for any length of time—days or decades—without incurring extra fees for short-term usage.
This transparent economic model provides predictable margins for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and allows enterprises to budget with over 95% accuracy. By removing variable costs, businesses can use their data more effectively, supporting multi-cloud strategies and ensuring long-term financial control. This approach aligns with the goals of the EU Data Act, which seeks to eliminate switching charges by 2027. The focus shifts from managing costs to unlocking the value within your cloud storage alternatives.
Build a Sovereign Foundation with EU-Only Infrastructure
For European businesses, data sovereignty is a strategic imperative, not just a compliance checkbox. Storing data with non-EU providers creates exposure to foreign laws like the CLOUD Act, a risk that 70% of EU decision-makers are actively seeking to mitigate. A sovereign-by-design approach ensures your data is stored and managed exclusively in certified European data centers, governed solely by EU law. This provides the highest level of legal certainty and GDPR compliance.
Country-level geofencing offers an even greater degree of control, allowing organizations to restrict data storage to a specific EU nation. This capability is critical for regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, where data residency is mandated by law. It guarantees that data processing remains within a defined jurisdiction, satisfying even the strictest compliance requirements with 100% certainty. Explore more about data security strategies.
This commitment to EU-centric operations provides a clear advantage. It eliminates the legal ambiguities and risks associated with data transfers outside the EEA. By choosing a truly European provider, businesses can ensure their data is protected by the robust privacy standards of the GDPR, building trust with customers and partners across the continent.
Preserve Investments with Full S3 API Compatibility
Migrating to a new storage platform should not require a complete overhaul of your existing workflows. Full S3 API compatibility ensures that the tools, scripts, and applications your teams rely on continue to work without modification, protecting tens of thousands of euros in development investments. This seamless integration covers not only basic object operations but also advanced features like versioning, lifecycle management, and object tagging.
This compatibility is a cornerstone of a flexible, multi-cloud strategy, enabling workload mobility between on-premises and cloud environments. For 78% of organizations operating in multi-cloud setups, S3-compatible APIs serve as the common language for data management. It provides the freedom to choose best-in-class services without the technical barriers that lead to vendor lock-in. Learn more about our commitment to S3 compatibility.
Out-of-the-box integrations with leading backup software, such as the collaboration with NovaBackup, further simplify the transition. These certified integrations reduce onboarding time by over 50% and ensure that critical data protection workflows are maintained without disruption. This focus on open standards and ecosystem support provides a practical path to modernizing your storage infrastructure.
Stay Ahead of Evolving EU Regulations
The European regulatory landscape is continuously evolving, demanding proactive compliance from cloud providers. Two key regulations taking full effect in 2025, the EU Data Act and the NIS-2 Directive, reshape data governance and security obligations. A compliant storage partner helps you meet these requirements by design, reducing your internal compliance burden by an estimated 25%.
Here is how a sovereign cloud platform addresses these new laws:
EU Data Act (September 2025): This regulation mandates data portability and interoperability to prevent vendor lock-in. Our model, with no egress fees and open S3 standards, provides a proven exit path by design, ensuring you can move your data and metadata without penalty.
NIS-2 Directive: This directive imposes stricter cybersecurity measures, including supply-chain assurance and incident reporting within 24 hours. Our operations incorporate continuous vulnerability management and transparent security processes, helping you satisfy these heightened resilience requirements.
By aligning with these forward-looking regulations, your organization not only ensures compliance but also gains a competitive advantage. This regulatory readiness demonstrates a commitment to data protection and operational resilience that builds customer trust. This proactive stance is essential for navigating the future of data management in Europe.
Strengthen Ransomware Defense with Immutable Storage
In an era of persistent cyber threats, robust ransomware protection is non-negotiable. Immutable storage, implemented via S3 Object Lock, is a critical defense layer that makes data tamper-proof for a designated period. This feature prevents files from being altered or deleted by anyone—including administrators—safeguarding your backups from malicious encryption and ensuring a clean recovery point is always available. This can reduce recovery times by up to 75% after an incident.
This technology is a key component of a modern 3-2-1 or 4-2-2 backup strategy, providing an air-gapped-like level of security in the cloud. When combined with granular Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and role-based access control (RBAC), it creates a multi-layered defense. This architecture ensures that even if primary systems are compromised, your backup data remains secure and recoverable.
The architecture is built for consistency and availability, with multi-AZ replication eliminating single points of failure. This guarantees data integrity and accessibility under demanding workloads, from millions of small files to large-scale archival. Such resilience is fundamental for any effective cloud storage and disaster recovery plan.
Enable Channel Partners with Predictable and Profitable Solutions
Take the Next Step Toward Sovereign Storage
Transitioning to a new storage platform should be a strategic step toward greater control, security, and economic clarity. An enterprise-ready EU alternative offers a practical path away from vendor lock-in and unpredictable costs, with migration simplicity built-in. With an always-hot architecture and full S3 compatibility, you can modernize your infrastructure without disrupting the workflows that power your business.
Whether your priority is ransomware protection, GDPR compliance, or building profitable partner services, the foundation is a predictable and sovereign storage solution. We invite you to explore how our EU-only, S3-compatible object storage can meet your specific needs. Talk to an expert today to discuss your use case or start a free trial to experience the performance and simplicity firsthand.
More Links
Wikipedia provides a comprehensive overview of object storage, a data storage architecture that manages data as objects.
German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) offers statistics on cloud computing usage by enterprises in the ICT sector in Germany.
Bitkom presents a cloud report with charts and analysis on current cloud computing trends.
German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) features a publication on Industry 4.0 and strategies for digital transformation.
acatech (German National Academy of Science and Engineering) details the 'Mission KI' project, focusing on artificial intelligence strategies and initiatives.
Fraunhofer showcases various cloud computing research projects.
Eurostat provides statistics and explanations on cloud computing usage by enterprises across Europe.
FAQ
What is 'Always-Hot' object storage?
Always-Hot object storage is an architecture where all data, regardless of its age or access frequency, is stored in a single high-performance tier. This means every object is instantly accessible without the retrieval delays or fees associated with moving data from colder, archival tiers.
Is your platform fully S3 compatible?
Yes, our platform offers full S3 API compatibility. This allows you to use your existing S3-native applications, tools, and scripts without any code changes. We support advanced features like Object Lock, versioning, and lifecycle management to ensure seamless integration.
How do you ensure GDPR compliance and data sovereignty?
We are a European company that operates exclusively in certified EU data centers. Your data never leaves the EU, ensuring it is governed by EU law and protected from foreign jurisdictions. We also offer country-level geofencing to meet specific data residency requirements.
What is your pricing model?
Our pricing is transparent and predictable. We charge only for the amount of storage you use. There are no fees for egress (data transfer out), API requests, or minimum storage durations, which eliminates the hidden costs common with other providers.
How does your solution help Managed Service Providers (MSPs)?
Our predictable pricing model allows MSPs to build profitable BaaS and archiving services with stable margins. We provide a partner-ready platform with a multi-tenant console, automation tools (API/CLI), and fast onboarding to help you serve your clients efficiently.
How does Immutable Storage protect against ransomware?
Our Immutable Storage feature, using S3 Object Lock, prevents data from being deleted or modified for a user-defined period. This creates a secure, unchangeable copy of your backups, guaranteeing that you have a clean version to restore from in the event of a ransomware attack.
