The Data Act Promise: How to Keep IT Infrastructures Portable Without “Egress Fees” and Barriers

A nightmare for any IT decision-maker is the phenomenon of vendor lock-in—the technological and economic captivity with a single IT service provider or cloud provider. What starts with flexible rates and quick deployments often ends in a dead end: storage costs rise, service quality declines, yet switching to another provider is internally declared “impossible.”

The barriers to switching are often artificial in nature. In addition to proprietary data formats, many large cloud corporations primarily use an economic barrier: so-called egress fees (data export fees). Anyone wishing to withdraw their own data from the platform is charged. To put an end to these anti-competitive practices, the European Union has enacted the Data Act. For companies, this regulation is a powerful tool to legally demand the full portability of their IT infrastructure, down to the network and DNS level.

The Anatomy of Switching Barriers: How Customers Are Tied Down

Proprietary cloud and edge providers have developed sophisticated strategies to make customer exits as complex and costly as possible. In the area of network and DNS infrastructure, this manifests through three barriers:

1. Artificial Toll Fees (Egress Fees)

While uploading data to the cloud (ingress) is usually free, many providers charge heavily for each gigabyte that leaves their infrastructure. For companies needing to move terabytes of historical log files, DNS zone histories, or AI training data, the migration process becomes an unpredictable budget risk.

2. Functional Incompatibility

Many cloud giants package standard network functions into proprietary, vendor-specific APIs. Those who deeply integrate their DNS zones or load balancer logics with the internal automation tools of a specific hyperscaler find that their configuration scripts work nowhere else when switching. The entire routing logic must be reinvented.

3. Lack of Exit Runbooks

In a crisis, such as a severe compliance conflict or sudden price escalations, companies lack standardized processes to move operations without weeks of downtime. Providers deliberately do not provide standardized tools for mass export of configurations.

The Data Act Mandate: Freedom for Corporate Data

The EU Data Act breaks these structures by granting cloud service users a legal right to barrier-free portability and the complete waiver of switching fees.

The regulation forces infrastructure providers to redesign their platforms according to clear criteria:

• Ban on Egress Fees: Charging fees for pure data export in the event of a provider switch is gradually completely prohibited. Moving data should no longer be a cost factor.
• Ensuring Functional Equivalence: The source provider must technically ensure that the customer can continue their services with the new provider in comparable quality and with the same functionality.
• Disclosure of Interfaces: Providers must offer transparent, open APIs through which all configuration data, metadata, and logs can be exported in standardized, machine-readable formats (such as JSON or YAML).

Practical Implementation: Cloud-Agnostic Edge Architecture

To not only theoretically benefit from the Data Act but to operationally utilize the gained freedom, IT architectures must be built from the outset on open web standards and vendor-independent interfaces. Using the example of a sovereign edge platform (Anycast DNS, Loadbalancing), it becomes clear what a Data Act-compliant setup looks like.

[ Your Edge Infrastructure ]
       |
       +---> Configuration via open OpenAPI (Standard JSON/YAML)
       |
       +---> Porting via Infrastructure as Code (Terraform scripts)
       |
       +---> Export all log data without artificial egress fees
       |
       v
[ Always ready for seamless switch to Partner B or On-Prem ]

1. Open APIs Instead of Proprietary Dashboards

A sovereign platform manages DNS zones and routing rules via a fully documented REST API (OpenAPI standard). Every configuration can be exported as a clean JSON or YAML manifest. If the company wants to change operators, the exact zone structures can be read out by script and imported one-to-one into the new system without information loss.

2. Multi-Cloud Capability Through Infrastructure as Code

Because the configuration of the edge infrastructure is defined as code (e.g., via Terraform), the system remains portable. The logical description of the network is separated from the physical execution. The company owns the full “exit runbooks” in the form of its own code repositories and can theoretically restart the entire global Anycast routing on a completely different infrastructure within minutes.

3. Free Flow of Telemetry and Log Data

Whether 34 billion log lines or millions of monitoring metrics per month: A sovereign architecture stores and exports data in open formats, without artificial barriers or hidden costs. The company retains unrestricted sovereignty over its historical data streams.

Conclusion: Portability as a Quality Feature

The Data Act marks the end of the era in which cloud providers could hold their customers captive through artificial walls and financial penalties. For medium-sized businesses, this means a tremendous opportunity: quality, data sovereignty, and service level agreements (SLAs) once again become the primary decision criteria in the market. Those who consistently rely on an open, standards-based, and cloud-agnostic IT architecture not only meet the legal requirements of tomorrow but also secure the most important trait in digital competition: the absolute freedom to choose the best path for their own company at any time.

FAQ: Data Act & Infrastructure Practice

When must the Data Act requirements be mandatorily implemented?

The European Data Act regulation must be fully and bindingly applied by all providers of cloud services and connected products operating in the European market after the transition periods expire on September 12, 2025.

Does the ban on egress fees apply to every data export?

The strict ban on switching fees and data export costs in the Data Act specifically applies in the context of a provider switch (switching). It is intended to prevent companies from being systematically deterred from migrating to a competing service provider by horrendous bills for data withdrawal. The normal, everyday data traffic in the course of ongoing operations remains subject to the agreed contractual conditions, with transparency also being required here.

How does the Data Act help in negotiating with IT service providers?

It shifts the power balance back to the customer. In contract negotiations or audits, companies can now explicitly demand proof of Data Act compliance. A provider must technically demonstrate how its exit scenario looks, what open APIs are available, and that no artificial barriers are erected in the event of termination. This massively increases the negotiation security of medium-sized businesses.