European Cloud
Sovereign Cloud
multi-cloud management UK
Achieve Sovereign Multi-Cloud Management in the UK
UK organisations now use multi-cloud environments, with 62% already adopting this strategy. Yet, this brings challenges in cost control, data sovereignty, and regulatory compliance. A sovereign, S3-compatible storage foundation offers a practical path to secure and efficient multi-cloud management.
Key Takeaways
Effective multi-cloud management in the UK must prioritise digital sovereignty to ensure GDPR compliance and mitigate risks from foreign laws.
Eliminating unpredictable egress and API fees is crucial for achieving cost control and enabling true data portability between cloud environments.
Using S3-compatible object storage with immutability (Object Lock) provides a powerful, standards-based defence against ransomware attacks.
Effective multi-cloud management in the UK requires more than just technical orchestration; it demands a strategy that addresses data sovereignty, cost predictability, and regulatory resilience. With 64% of organisations expecting to increase their multi-cloud use, the risk of vendor lock-in and exposure to non-EU laws like the CLOUD Act grows. This article outlines a path to mastering multi-cloud complexity by anchoring your data in a sovereign European cloud. We explore how S3-compatible object storage with zero egress fees provides the control and financial predictability needed to build a truly resilient and compliant IT infrastructure for 2025 and beyond.
Establish Digital Sovereignty in Your UK Multi-Cloud Architecture
For UK firms handling EU citizen data, GDPR compliance remains mandatory even after Brexit. A key challenge in multi-cloud management is ensuring data residency and avoiding exposure to foreign laws. Storing data exclusively in certified European data centers provides a direct solution. This approach guarantees that all data is governed by EU rules, mitigating risks associated with non-EU legal frameworks. For sectors like financial services, this level of control is not just best practice; it is a regulatory necessity.
Impossible Cloud offers country-level geofencing to enforce these boundaries with 100% certainty. By keeping data within predefined EU regions, your organisation gains EU legal certainty. This is a foundational step in building a trustworthy and compliant hybrid cloud governance framework. This strategy ensures your multi-cloud environment is sovereign by design, directly addressing a core concern for 80% of enterprises.
Eliminate Unpredictable Costs with a Zero Egress Fee Model
A major barrier to effective multi-cloud management is unpredictable costs, particularly data egress fees. These charges, applied when moving data out of a cloud, can reach up to 20 cents per GB, creating significant financial obstacles to switching providers or running hybrid workloads. Over two-thirds of businesses are forced to cut other IT budgets due to rising cloud costs. This pricing model creates vendor lock-in, making true cloud portability economically unfeasible for many.
A transparent economic model is essential for predictable multi-cloud operations. Our platform eliminates this barrier entirely with a clear policy: zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum storage duration. This predictable structure allows for accurate budgeting and empowers organisations to move data freely between clouds and on-premises systems. This approach supports better cloud cost management and removes the financial penalties that hinder strategic flexibility.
Leverage S3 Compatibility for True Cloud Portability
Vendor lock-in is a primary risk in any cloud strategy, limiting flexibility and increasing long-term costs. Full S3 API compatibility is the key to mitigating this risk in a multi-cloud environment. It ensures that your existing applications, scripts, and backup tools continue to work without modification. This protects your past technology investments and dramatically simplifies migration, reducing project timelines by up to 50%.
Our storage goes beyond basic S3 operations to support advanced capabilities. Here is what that enables:
Seamless integration with leading backup tools like Veeam and NovaBackup.
Consistent performance for versioning and lifecycle management policies across platforms.
The ability to run existing pipelines and applications without any code rewrites.
A clear exit path, preserving your long-term freedom and negotiation power.
This commitment to open standards is central to an effective vendor lock-in avoidance strategy. It ensures your data remains portable and your architecture agile.
Build Resilient Ransomware Protection with Immutable Storage
In a multi-cloud setup, ensuring data resilience against threats like ransomware is paramount. Immutable storage, enabled via S3 Object Lock, provides a powerful defence. It uses a Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) model, making it impossible for anyone to alter or delete data for a specified period. This feature neutralises the encryption stage of a ransomware attack, ensuring your backups are always recoverable.
Implementing this protection follows a clear, multi-layered approach. Our “Always-Hot” architecture ensures all data, including immutable backups, is instantly accessible. This eliminates restore delays and complex tiering policies that often fail during emergencies. A practical implementation includes these steps:
Enable S3 Object Lock on your backup buckets to create immutable copies.
Integrate with your existing backup software, which uses the S3 API to manage retention policies.
Regularly test your disaster recovery plan to validate the integrity of your off-site backups.
Combine with robust Identity and Access Management (IAM) controls, including MFA and RBAC, for layered security.
This makes your storage vendor evaluation a critical part of your cybersecurity posture.
Prepare for Upcoming EU Regulations: Data Act and NIS-2
The regulatory landscape is evolving, and UK firms serving EU markets must prepare. The EU Data Act, fully applicable from September 2025, mandates data portability and makes it easier to switch cloud providers. It requires providers to remove technical and contractual barriers, with a phased ban on all switching fees by January 2027. Our platform is already aligned with these principles, offering a practical exit strategy by design.
Simultaneously, the NIS-2 Directive expands cybersecurity obligations, focusing on supply chain security. It requires organisations to assess the security practices of their suppliers, including cloud providers. Our architecture, built on end-to-end encryption and EU-only data centers, helps you meet these stringent supply-chain assurance requirements. Adopting a sovereign cloud foundation is a proactive step toward future-proofing your cross-cloud data strategy against new compliance demands.
Empower UK Channel Partners with a Predictable Value Proposition
For UK Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and resellers, profitability in multi-cloud services depends on predictable margins. Volatile fees from hyperscalers erode profitability, making it difficult to build sustainable BaaS or archiving offerings. Our partner-centric model provides the stability needed to succeed. With zero egress and API fees, MSPs can offer competitive, fixed-price services with defensible margins of over 30%.
Our partner program is built for efficiency and scale. The multi-tenant console simplifies management with robust RBAC and MFA controls. Automation via API and CLI allows for seamless integration into existing workflows, reducing onboarding time by 40%. With our new UK distributor, Northamber plc, local access and support for UK resellers are stronger than ever. This creates a clear path for partners to deliver sovereign and compliant cloud-agnostic storage solutions to their clients.
More Links
GOV.UK provides a cloud guide for the public sector, offering guidance on cloud adoption and usage within government.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) offers cloud computing guidance for organisations, focusing on data protection and privacy considerations.
Deloitte discusses the use of multi-cloud environments for managing risk in a blog post.
Eurostat provides statistics on cloud computing usage by enterprises across Europe.
techUK offers information about events focused on navigating sovereignty in the era of cloud computing.
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has published a comprehensive report on cloud computing.
FAQ
What is sovereign cloud storage?
Sovereign cloud storage is a service where data is stored exclusively within a specific legal jurisdiction, such as the European Union. This ensures the data is subject only to the laws of that region, like GDPR, and is protected from foreign legal access requests, providing digital sovereignty.
How does Object Lock protect against ransomware?
S3 Object Lock makes data immutable, meaning it cannot be altered or deleted for a set period. Since ransomware works by encrypting files and making them unusable, Object Lock prevents this encryption from happening to your backups, ensuring you always have a clean, recoverable copy of your data.
Are there really no egress fees with Impossible Cloud?
Correct. Impossible Cloud operates on a transparent pricing model with no egress fees, no charges for API calls, and no minimum storage durations. This allows you to access and move your data as needed without facing unexpected financial penalties, which is essential for effective multi-cloud and hybrid cloud operations.
How does your service help with the EU Data Act?
The EU Data Act, applying from September 2025, mandates easy switching between cloud providers and will ban switching fees by 2027. Our platform is built on these principles of interoperability and portability, using the standard S3 API and having no lock-in fees, making us fully compliant with the spirit and letter of the act.
Is this service suitable for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)?
Yes, our platform is designed for MSPs. The predictable pricing model allows for stable, defensible margins on services like Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS). We provide a multi-tenant partner console, automation via API/CLI, and have a UK distribution channel through Northamber plc to support our partners.
What does 'Always-Hot' storage mean?
‘Always-Hot’ means all your data is immediately accessible without any delays or extra fees for retrieval. Unlike tiered storage models that move infrequently accessed data to slower, cheaper tiers, our architecture ensures every object is ready for high-performance access at all times, simplifying operations and speeding up restores.
