2024

Year in Review

The year we changed cloud
infrastructure forever

Welcome to UpCloud’s
2024 Year in Review

What a year it has been. From launching zero-cost egress, to VPN Gateways, we’ve been breaking new ground – creating a sustainable and reliable cloud infrastructure that will ensure our customers can build and maintain mission-critical services for years to come.

Operating in the cloud has always presented engineering challenges, but as we move into 2025, data security and regulatory compliance are increasingly tough to tackle. We’ve made it our mission to enable customers to leverage data security, data privacy, and European regulatory compliance as significant drivers of innovation and growth. To that end, we revisited UpCloud’s organizational strategy to deliver European engineering excellence that complies with the robust EU Regulatory Framework on Data, atop a comprehensive cloud stack that is reliable, scalable, secure, and optimized for costs.

Speaking of cloud costs, we lit a fire under the cloud ecosystem in May when we eliminated egress fees, and offered unlimited free outbound traffic for cloud services instead. On top of this, we launched our developer plans, giving users a streamlined set of essential services starting at just 3€.

Alongside our product-led initiatives, we began publicly reporting our Environmental, Sustainability, and Governance strategies in 2024. We’re proud of the huge stride we’ve made, including running 100% of our offices on renewable energy, and will continue to champion ESG at every turn.

With such strong foundational work delivered in 2024, we’re looking forward to what the new year will bring. Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

2024 Highlights

0 €

Zero-cost Egress

100 %

Upcloud offices running on renewable energy

20

Nationalities based in 17 countries working at UpCloud

Technology 1/5

When UpCloud launched more than a decade ago, we boldly stated that we were determined to break barriers in the cloud ecosystem. In 2024, we demonstrated our commitment to that original vision is stronger than ever. This year we went above and beyond to ensure exceptional performance, reliability, and scalability.

 

2024 HIGHLIGHTS

0 €

Zero-cost Egress

99.99 %

Infrastructure
Availability

VPN Gateway

Launched for
Multi-Cloud connectivity

Product Updates

Cloud cost optimization has long been a sticking point for us, because  far too many businesses struggle with the uncertainty and potential cost spikes associated with egress fees. We firmly believe that you should have a full overview of your cloud spend. But fundamentally, we think the entire ecosystem needs to change. That’s why we eliminated egress fees in May, offering unlimited free outbound traffic for cloud services instead.

 

This isn’t just an advancement; it’s a revolution. Unlimited egress represents our pledge to empowering developers and businesses with true freedom and flexibility.”

– UpCloud Founder & CTO Joel Pihlajamaa

Our commitment to product-led growth led us to a huge highlight of 2024 – launching  developer plans for developers and small teams, which offer a streamlined set of essential services from  just 3€ – perfect for testing, development, and hosting personal projects.

A major milestone in 2024 was the general availability of VPN Gateways, enabling secure connections between UpCloud’s Private Networks and any external IPsec-compatible endpoints. The service’s integrated Network Address Translation (NAT) capabilities and straightforward setup have made multi-cloud connectivity more accessible than before. This represents our commitment to help customers build flexible infrastructure that spans across multiple providers and on-premises networks.

 

Check out our Changelog

For a detailed timeline of our 2024 releases. View Changelog

What innovations and updates would you like to see UpCloud release in 2025?

Give us your feedback and let’s see what we can make happen!

UpCloud 2024 Releases

As always, it’s been a busy year for our product and engineering teams, who have focussed on product updates and new releases that empower users to more easily manage their cloud native tech stacks, free from vendor lock-in. Here are some of our highlights from 2024.

 

Data Centers

13 Data centers, 9 Countries, 4 Continents

 

2

New availability zones for Object Storage Service

70 %

Data centers run on renewable energy

Data Center Updates

This year we doubled-down on process improvements to ensure uptime stability across our datacenters:

  • Improved instructions for on-hand personnel working on our hardware in remote DCs.
  • Enhanced working processes (e.g. handling cold equipment only).
  • Introduction of maintenance windows for predictable maintenance schedules.

We’re keeping a close eye on the practical impact these processes deliver, and will continue to focus on reduced downtime throughout 2025.

End-of-life device management

Pic

EOL storage devices

End-of-life devices that have hosted customer data go through a comprehensive data deletion process and are destroyed by our ISO27001 certified partners, in accordance with the WEEE directive. All EOL devices are processed in Finland.

Pic

EOL servers and routers

Some of our EOL devices which we cannot repurpose any further are cleaned and donated for educational purposes.  Servers and routers which have not stored any customer data and which we cannot repurpose are donated to schools and universities. This year we donated devices to Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

Open Source

We doubled-down on our commitment to open source in 2024, releasing our first Crossplane Provider, updating our Terraform Provider, and offering Valkey as an alternative to Redis. Check out some of our highlights, and stay tuned for more investment into the open source landscape in 2025!

Valkey

We voted for open source when we released support for Valkey on our managed databases. By adopting Valkey, the open source alternative to Redis, UpCloud ensures continued transparency, community collaboration, and freedom from corporate control in our managed key-value database service.

Watch our Valley Fireside Chat with Valkey Developer Advocate Kyle Davis.

Crossplane Provider

At Upcloud, we’re always excited to adopt Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects and make them work best for our end users. So in May we released UpCloud’s Crossplane Provider, which you can use to manage UpCloud resources directly through Crossplane with Kubernetes manifests, even across the cloud! This release complemented our Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tooling by providing a Kubernetes-native way to manage UpCloud resources.

Kubernetes Conformance

We value the CNCF’s strong project governance, and have been a certified Kubernetes (Hosted) provider since Kubernetes 1.26. This year, we updated our conformance to Kubernetes 1.29, and are working towards achieving 1.30 and 1.31 early in the new year.

Terraform Provider

One of the best things about open source is how projects evolve in ways you don’t always expect. In 2017, Ville Vesilehto, Lead Product Manager at UpCloud, started hacking on a Terraform Provider. That weekend project evolved into an essential tool for infrastructure automation and in 2018 we asked Ville if we could make the provider an official part of our developer tooling ecosystem – providing resources and support while maintaining the open source nature of the project. Even better, Ville joined UpCloud in 2021, and improved the project he’d started four years earlier – releasing V5.15.0 in 2024!

Read Ville’s blog

We welcome your community contributions

Check out our GitHub repos to get started:

Community 2/5

Community means a lot to us at UpCloud. It extends from our staff, to our customers and partners, through to the open source projects we champion. We genuinely value each and every contribution to our collective success.

 

Check out how some of our customers leveraged UpCloud for their mission-critical operations this year:

Achieving competitive edge with European cloud

Hailey HR has empowered over 500 HR teams to streamline processes, save time and ensure GDPR compliance. Managers and employees have the information they need, right at their fingertips while maintaining the highest level of data security.  UpCloud’s European cloud-native offering has enabled Hailey to stand […]

Cloud servers, Managed Databases, Object storage

Providing the performance and support against cyber threats

Due to the success of its solutions, including simulations of real-world scenarios, Hack The Box found the need for high-performance cloud infrastructure in order to meet customer demand. One of the major drawbacks of their previous setup was the slow deployment rate of one of its core cloud services, which consisted of […]

Cloud servers, Managed Databases, Private Cloud

Support

2024 Highlights

We pride ourselves on providing outstanding customer service – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In 2024, we were proud to continue our outstanding streak, responding to initial queries in just 46 seconds!

53

NPS Score

46

Seconds median first response time

94 %

Of customers extremely happy with support

Partners

Recognizing the importance of collaboration, in 2024 we established  our Partner Business Unit. Dedicating ourselves to fostering stronger relationships with our partners, and creating bridges for mutual cooperation and success, we’ve focused on delivering  greater value for our partners by orienting features and products specifically to their needs.

Looking ahead to 2025, our strategy focuses on refining channels, platforms, and resources to deliver even greater value and support for our partners’ growth and success.

WHMCS Module for Web Hosting Companies

One of our major product developments in 2024 was the launch of a new WHMCS module, designed specifically for web hosting companies. This module simplifies operations and enhances automation capabilities for hosting providers, allowing them to focus on scaling their business rather than managing complex backend systems.

Key features of the WHMCS module include:

  • Seamless integration with existing infrastructure.
  • Improved customer onboarding workflows.
  • Advanced analytics for better decision-making and performance tracking.

Check out our Blog

Read how UpCloud Partners Elastisys provides a fully GDPR-compliant Kubernetes platform, hosted on UpCloud’s European cloud servers, along with consulting and training services.

View Blog

Events

Open source is far more than just code. As responsible open source citizens, it’s our mission to empower tech communities through creating space for sharing knowledge, and expanding personal and professional networks. To that end, we opened our doors regularly throughout 2024 for Helsinki’s amazing open source communities, hosting nine MeetUps at our HQ, and sponsoring events including Slush, Junction, and Future Frontend. This year, we also recommitted to the vibrant cloud native ecosystem by renewing our Silver CNCF membership, and are proud to support the incredible velocity of its projects.

9

Meetups Hosted

3

Events Sponsored

Meet us at FOSDEM 2025

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organised
by the community for the community. Join us at FOSDEM for a relaxed happy hour at BrewDog Brussels and in developer rooms throughout the weekend!

FOSDEM – 1 & 2 February 2025 – Brussels

Join Us

UpCloud for Good

We support community initiatives that make a positive impact, including donating end-of-life devices to schools and hosting campaigns offering free credits for students to use our platform – promoting educational and technological advancements.

We are also empowering selected non-profit organizations by hosting their websites for free on UpCloud.

ESG 3/5

This year we released UpCloud’s first Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) report, but our commitment to improving the world around us goes back to our founding values. We’ve always made a conscious effort to operate sustainably – from the renewable energy we use to power our data centers, to ensuring gender pay parity within our organization. We are determined to play our part as we strive towards a better world.

100 %

UpCloud Offices run on renewable energy

70 %

UpCloud data centers run on renewable energy

0 %

Direct emissions

Dive into our full ESG Report

to learn about our commitment to improving the world around us, and how we’re investing in initiatives that ensure long-term sustainability.

Read the ESG Report

Organization 4/5

“Our purpose is to champion the free and foundational spirit of the internet, and become The European Cloud with a global reach.”

Joel Pihlajamaa

 

When UpCloud was founded in 2012, our vision was to revolutionize the global cloud services landscape, starting with Europe as our foundation. More than a decade later, we’re still driven by the same relentless pursuit of performance, data security, and sovereignty. But the time was right for us to refresh our strategy for the years ahead, to ensure that our customers benefit from the evolving regulatory landscape and are placed to take full advantage of the modern cloud native ecosystem.

In championing the free and foundational spirit of the internet, we will operate with an open source ethos that stays true to the vision and values of the internet, with a touch of the same rebellious and fun nature of the pioneering engineers and early adopters. In practice, this means that we are committed to contributing innovation back into the ecosystem, while ensuring every aspect of our platform is accessible and manageable, for full control with zero vendor lock in.

As The European Cloud with a global reach, we will help users leverage compliance and data security as significant drivers for growth, atop a product stack that reflects European innovation and engineering excellence. In practice, this means that we comply with the robust EU Regulatory Framework on Data – going beyond GDPR to ensure more than just personal data is protected, giving users peace of mind that data is secure and fully in their control. Alongside, we will ensure that every layer of our product stack is optimized for our users’ acceleration.

Upcloudians

2024 HIGHLIGHTS

31

New Starters in 9 different countries

20

Nationalities, based in 17 countries

96 %

of Employees feel Included in the Workplace

Internally, we’re a strong community of innovative, welcoming,  and very fun people. We’re fully committed to making UpCloud an amazing place to work and we actively support well-being by providing flexibility, choice, and support.

Our professionals have great freedom to choose how to deliver their work successfully. Hybrid work is the norm for all our teams, but many work remote full-time.

We also create opportunities to collaborate on a regular basis, from in-person events, to hybrid and virtual meetings, to ensure we are aligned in our work and that everyone is fully supported.

Despite a very busy year, we found time to connect in October through the UpCloud Retreat in Barcelona.

Meanwhile our regular UpCloud events were an opportunity to network and socialize with peers in a relaxed setting. This year we took part in activities including:

Plant Workshop

Archery

Bowling

Laser Tag

VR Games

Amusement Park Halloween Night

Want to join us on our mission to revolutionize cloud infrastructure?

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing this journey with us in 2024. We’re excited for the coming year and all that we will achieve together.   We’d love to see you in 2025! Check out our events calendar for our upcoming events.

Events Calendar

No upcoming events

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