Cost Optimization
AWS Alternative
OVH migration considerations
Secure Your Data's Future: A Strategic Guide to OVH Migration Considerations
Planning a cloud storage migration involves more than just moving data; it requires a strategic focus on digital sovereignty and cost control. A staggering 87% of IT leaders now see compliance as a top priority when choosing a provider. This guide outlines the key OVH migration considerations to ensure your next platform is secure, compliant, and economically predictable.
Key Takeaways
Prioritise providers with EU-only data centers and governance to ensure GDPR compliance and eliminate exposure to foreign laws like the US CLOUD Act.
Select a storage partner with a transparent pricing model, specifically one with zero egress fees and no API call costs, to ensure budget predictability and avoid vendor lock-in.
Ensure your chosen platform offers 100% S3 API compatibility and features like Immutable Object Lock to simplify migration, protect existing toolchains, and build strong ransomware resilience.
As European enterprises evaluate their cloud strategy, the conversation has shifted from 'if' to 'how.' With regulations like the EU Data Act taking full effect from September 2025, the criteria for selecting a storage partner have sharpened. Key OVH migration considerations now center on ensuring true data sovereignty, eliminating unpredictable costs, and guaranteeing performance without complex tiering. For UK IT leaders and MSPs, a successful migration hinges on choosing a platform that is sovereign by design, offering 100% S3 compatibility and a cost model that protects margins. This strategic framework covers the 7 enterprise-ready themes that should guide your migration to a European cloud alternative.
Prioritise Digital Sovereignty and EU Compliance
True digital sovereignty is the number one migration driver for 70% of EU businesses. Your data's physical location is not enough; you must ensure it is governed by EU law, free from foreign jurisdiction like the US CLOUD Act. Storing data with a strictly European provider operating in certified EU data centers is the only way to guarantee this level of control. Impossible Cloud offers country-level geofencing, ensuring your data stays within predefined regions to meet GDPR and other regulatory demands with 100% certainty.
This approach provides the legal certainty that 46% of companies identify as the single most important factor in provider selection. A focus on European data sovereignty removes significant compliance risks associated with non-EU providers. This foundational step ensures your migration builds on a compliant and secure base for the next decade.
Demand Full S3 Compatibility to Protect Investments
A successful migration preserves your existing workflows and investments, which is why 100% S3 API compatibility is critical. Many providers claim compatibility, but enterprise-readiness requires support for advanced capabilities like versioning, lifecycle management, and event notifications across any API, CLI, or SDK. Developers can reduce application development time by up to 25% when using a fully compatible S3 interface. This ensures your backup tools, applications, and automation scripts continue to function without code rewrites, saving hundreds of development hours.
This seamless integration protects your past investments and minimizes migration risk to nearly zero. Impossible Cloud's full S3 compatibility ensures that your entire ecosystem, including vital data migration utilities, works out-of-the-box from day one. This focus on interoperability is the key to a low-friction transition.
Eliminate Unpredictable Costs with a Transparent Model
Unpredictable costs are a major pain point, with hidden egress fees and API call charges driving bills up by 30% or more for data-intensive workloads. Many providers offer low initial storage prices but penalize you for accessing your own data, with egress charges ranging from $0.07 to $0.09 per GB. These models create budget uncertainty and vendor lock-in, making it expensive to switch providers or run hybrid-cloud workloads.
A transparent pricing model is a core part of any modern migration strategy. Consider these common hidden costs to avoid:
Data Egress Fees: Charges for moving data out of the cloud.
API Call Costs: Fees for PUT, GET, and LIST requests that can accumulate to thousands of dollars.
Minimum Storage Durations: Penalties for deleting data before a 90 or 180-day minimum.
Tier-Restore Fees: Charges to access data from archival or cold storage tiers.
Cross-Region Replication Fees: Costs for transferring data between a provider's own data centers.
Impossible Cloud is predictable by design, with zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum storage duration. This transparent economic model simplifies budgeting and is essential for preventing vendor lock-in.
Architect for Resilience with Always-Hot, Immutable Storage
Complex storage tiering introduces operational risk, restore delays, and API timeouts that can disrupt business continuity. An "Always-Hot" object storage model ensures all data is immediately accessible with predictable low latency, a critical factor for backup and disaster recovery. This architecture eliminates the lifecycle policy drift that affects over 50% of tiered storage environments. For ransomware protection, immutable storage via S3 Object Lock is now considered essential by 69% of IT leaders.
This feature creates a tamper-proof copy of your data, making it impervious to malicious encryption or deletion. Impossible Cloud's architecture is built for consistency and availability, combining an always-hot model with Object Lock to strengthen your ransomware posture. This makes it one of the most resilient cloud storage alternatives available for critical workloads.
Future-Proof Your Migration with a Governance-Ready Platform
Regulatory demands are intensifying, and your next cloud platform must be ready for what's next. The NIS-2 Directive, effective since October 2024, mandates comprehensive supply-chain security and risk management. Furthermore, the EU Data Act requires providers to remove switching barriers and ensure data portability by September 2025, a rule designed to prevent lock-in. A forward-looking migration plan must account for these evolving standards from day one.
Your migration checklist should validate these governance and security capabilities:
Identity and Access Management (IAM) with granular, role-based policies (RBAC) and MFA.
Support for external identity providers via SAML/OIDC for seamless integration.
Immutable Storage (Object Lock) for audit-ready data retention and ransomware defense.
Country-level geofencing to enforce data residency rules for regulated workloads.
EU-controlled key management and robust encryption for data in transit and at rest.
Impossible Cloud bakes these features into its core, simplifying your cloud migration planning and ensuring long-term compliance.
Empower MSPs and Channel Partners with a Predictable Value Chain
For MSPs, resellers, and system integrators, margin predictability is everything. A cloud storage partner with zero egress or API fees allows you to build profitable Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and archiving solutions with defensible margins of at least 25%. Impossible Cloud is partner-ready, providing a multi-tenant management console with robust RBAC and MFA for secure client segmentation. Automation via a full-featured API and CLI allows for integration into existing provisioning and billing systems, speeding up onboarding to just a few hours.
This partner-centric model is designed to fuel growth and simplify compliance for the entire channel. With distribution momentum from partners like apian in Germany and our first UK distributor, Northamber plc, local access for UK resellers is expanding rapidly. This makes it easier than ever to compare OVH vs UK providers and choose a partner built for the channel. Now is the time to start the conversation.
More Links
Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) offers statistical data on the use of cloud computing in enterprises.
KPMG presents the Cloud Monitor 2022, providing insights and analysis on the cloud market.
ENISA (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) provides a report on cloud computing, likely covering security aspects and recommendations.
Fraunhofer IESE describes its services in the area of information security, specifically focusing on cloud security.
Data Protection Conference (DSK) outlines criteria for sovereign clouds in a position paper.
FAQ
How does Impossible Cloud ensure my data stays within the EU?
Impossible Cloud is a European company that operates exclusively in certified European data centers. We provide country-level geofencing, allowing you to restrict your data to specific EU countries, guaranteeing it is always subject to EU law and GDPR.
Will my existing backup software work with Impossible Cloud?
Yes. Impossible Cloud offers 100% S3 API compatibility, which means it works out-of-the-box with leading backup tools like Veeam, NovaBackup, and others. You can simply change the endpoint in your software to start using our platform without any code changes.
What makes your pricing model 'predictable'?
Our pricing is based on a simple, transparent per-terabyte storage rate. We have no egress fees, no API request charges, and no minimum storage durations. This eliminates the hidden costs common with other providers, so your bill is always predictable.
How does 'Always-Hot' storage benefit my business?
Our 'Always-Hot' model means all your data is instantly accessible without any restore delays or retrieval fees associated with tiered storage. This simplifies operations, ensures predictable performance for your applications, and is critical for rapid recovery in a disaster scenario.
Is Impossible Cloud suitable for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)?
Absolutely. We are partner-ready with a multi-tenant console, full automation via API/CLI, and a predictable cost model that protects your margins. Our platform is designed to help MSPs deliver profitable and compliant BaaS and archiving services.
How do I start a migration to Impossible Cloud?
Getting started is simple due to our S3 compatibility. You can use any S3-compatible migration tool to move your data. We recommend starting with a pilot migration to test your workflows. Talk to an expert today to get a demo and plan your transition.
