Cloud Storage
Enterprise Storage
open data storage UK
Achieve Digital Sovereignty with Predictable Open Data Storage in the UK
UK businesses face increasing pressure to ensure data sovereignty while controlling spiraling cloud costs. A new approach to open data storage offers a solution that is sovereign by design. It delivers predictable economics and full S3 compatibility without compromise.
Key Takeaways
UK businesses can achieve digital sovereignty and mitigate risks from foreign laws by using geofenced, EU-only open data storage.
Eliminating egress fees, API call costs, and minimum storage durations creates a fully predictable cloud storage budget, saving up to 80% in total costs.
Full S3 compatibility combined with an 'Always-Hot' data model ensures seamless migration and consistent performance for critical applications and backups.
For UK IT leaders, the landscape of data governance is more complex than ever, balancing domestic laws like the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 with EU regulations. The need for true data sovereignty has become a strategic priority, driven by concerns over foreign jurisdiction and the need for GDPR compliance. This article outlines a strategic approach to open data storage in the UK, focusing on a European solution that delivers regulatory peace of mind, cost predictability, and enterprise-grade performance for the demanding market of 2025.
Prioritise UK Data Sovereignty with EU-Based Storage
Data sovereignty is now a critical issue for over 70% of UK businesses post-Brexit. Storing data within a strict EU legal framework provides a direct solution to challenges like the US CLOUD Act, ensuring your data is governed only by EU law. This is vital as the EU's data protection adequacy decision for the UK is only guaranteed until June 2025, creating significant uncertainty for long-term planning.
Impossible Cloud offers a practical path to sovereignty with geofenced storage in certified European data centers. This architecture provides country-level control, keeping your data within predefined regions under EU rules. This guarantees that data residency requirements for regulated industries like finance are met with 100% certainty. For businesses handling sensitive information, this level of control is no longer optional.
Choosing a truly European provider for your public sector cloud needs eliminates the legal conflicts that can arise from providers headquartered overseas. This strategic decision future-proofs your data architecture against geopolitical shifts.
Eliminate Egress Fees for a Fully Predictable Storage Budget
The UK cloud computing market is substantial, valued at over £47 billion in 2024 and projected to grow at a CAGR of 18.4%. Yet, many businesses feel locked into their providers due to complex pricing and punitive egress fees. Our model directly addresses this pain point with a transparent, predictable structure: zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum storage duration.
This approach transforms budget forecasting for IT departments, turning unpredictable operational expenses into fixed costs. Consider a 100TB backup archive; with many providers, restoring just 20% of that data could incur thousands in egress charges. With Impossible Cloud, that cost is always zero, offering up to an 80% total cost savings.
Here is how a predictable cost model benefits your operations:
It removes financial penalties for accessing your own data for restores or analytics.
It simplifies multi-cloud strategies by removing data transfer cost barriers.
It provides MSPs with stable, defensible margins for Backup-as-a-Service offerings.
It aligns with the EU Data Act's goal of making it easier for customers to switch providers.
This economic clarity allows for better long-term planning and investment in other critical IT areas, such as your enterprise data lake infrastructure.
Maintain Full S3 Compatibility Without Rearchitecting Workflows
Migrating to a new storage platform often carries the risk of costly application rewrites and workflow disruption. We eliminate this risk with full S3-API compatibility that goes beyond basic operations. Your existing applications, scripts, and tools continue working with just a simple endpoint change, protecting investments that amount to thousands of development hours.
Our platform supports advanced S3 capabilities like versioning, lifecycle management, and event notifications. Furthermore, our “Always-Hot” object storage model ensures all data is immediately accessible with consistent, low latencies. This avoids the operational complexity and hidden restore fees associated with tiered storage architectures, where retrieving archived data can take hours.
This seamless integration is especially valuable for data-intensive use cases. Whether you are managing millions of small files or require the best object storage for large data sets, the architecture is built for consistency and scale. This ensures your data pipelines remain stable and performant.
Deploy Immutable Backups for Resilient Ransomware Protection
Ransomware remains a primary threat, with attacks growing more sophisticated and recovery costs averaging over £1.5 million per incident. A robust defence requires more than just backups; it requires backups that cannot be altered or deleted. Our Immutable Storage with S3 Object Lock provides this critical layer of defence, creating a WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) state for your data.
This feature makes your backups tamper-proof for a defined retention period, rendering them immune to ransomware encryption. Even if an attacker gains administrative access, they cannot delete or modify the immutable backup files. This capability is a cornerstone of modern 3-2-1 and 4-2-2 backup strategies and is essential for cyber insurance compliance.
To build a ransomware-resilient posture, IT leaders should implement these steps:
Activate S3 Object Lock on all critical backup buckets with a 30-day minimum retention policy.
Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC) for all storage accounts.
Regularly test your disaster recovery plan, including a full restore from an immutable backup set.
Integrate with leading backup tools like NovaBackup, which have out-of-the-box support for our platform.
This proactive security stance is fundamental for any organisation looking at G-Cloud storage solutions.
Align with GDPR, NIS-2, and the EU Data Act by Design
The regulatory environment for UK businesses is tightening. The EU Data Act, fully applicable from September 2025, introduces strict rules on data portability and safeguards against non-EU government access. Our platform is built to meet these requirements, ensuring you have a proven exit path without vendor lock-in.
Simultaneously, the NIS-2 Directive expands cybersecurity obligations, holding organisations responsible for their supply chain security. Under NIS-2, financial penalties for non-compliance can reach up to 2% of global turnover. Our EU-centric operations and transparent security posture help you meet these supply-chain assurance duties.
By using our geofenced storage, you ensure compliance with GDPR data residency rules from day one. This regulatory readiness provides a competitive advantage, especially for those in finance, healthcare, and public sectors. It turns a complex compliance burden into a straightforward operational reality.
Drive Predictable Margins for UK MSPs with a Partner-Ready Platform
For UK Managed Service Providers, profitability depends on predictable margins and operational efficiency. Our partner program is designed for this, with zero egress or API fees ensuring the price you quote is the price you pay. This model protects your margins on services like Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and archiving.
The NIS-2 directive now explicitly includes MSPs in its scope, increasing their compliance responsibilities. Our platform helps MSPs meet these new security and reporting obligations for their clients. The partner console provides essential tools for the channel, including multi-tenant management, automation via API/CLI, and detailed reporting.
With the recent appointment of our first UK distributor, Northamber plc, local access and support for UK resellers and MSPs have been significantly expanded. This 2025 milestone demonstrates our commitment to the UK channel. It provides partners with the resources needed for fast onboarding and scalable growth, especially those working with institutions that use services like the Jisc framework.
More Links
UK government provides insights into the UK's National Data Strategy.
FAQ
How does Impossible Cloud help my UK business comply with GDPR?
Impossible Cloud ensures your data is stored exclusively in certified European data centers. With country-level geofencing, you can restrict data to specific EU regions, helping your business meet the stringent data residency and processing requirements of GDPR.
Is it difficult to migrate from my current S3 provider?
No, migration is straightforward. Because Impossible Cloud is fully S3 API-compatible, you only need to change the endpoint in your existing applications, scripts, or backup tools. No code changes are required, and our team can provide guidance.
What is 'Always-Hot' storage?
Always-Hot storage means all your data is immediately accessible at the highest performance tier. Unlike tiered models that move data to slower 'cool' or 'archive' layers, there are no delays or extra fees to retrieve your data, which simplifies operations and guarantees fast restores.
How does your partner program support UK MSPs?
Our program is built for predictability and profit. We offer a simple pricing model with no egress or API fees, enabling stable margins. Partners get access to a multi-tenant console, automation tools, and local support through our UK distributor, Northamber plc.
What makes your storage 'sovereign by design'?
Our company is European, and we operate exclusively in European data centers, governed solely by EU law. This design choice fundamentally protects your data from foreign legal frameworks like the US CLOUD Act, ensuring true digital sovereignty.
How do you ensure the security of my data?
We use a multi-layered security approach. This includes encryption in transit and at rest, immutable storage with Object Lock for ransomware protection, and granular Identity and Access Management (IAM) with MFA and RBAC. Our architecture is designed to eliminate single points of failure.
