CentriLogic Enters IaaS Market with Mothership1

The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space has a new competitor hoping to offer cost and technical advantages over the the incumbent offerings in the space. Mothership1 is a joint venture between data center and hosting firm CentriLogic and technology incubator Incubaid.

Mothership1 is being targeted at software developers, VARs and small and medium businesses (SMBs) as an alternative to IaaS offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Digital Ocean, Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG).

It’s a bold move by CentriLogic, which has spent the last few years building out its data center services and becoming a more global company. Based in Toronto, CentriLogic has data centers in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Mothership1 has created the software; it is unique and built specifically for creating cloud platforms so we are not licensing expensive middleware from third parties,” said Robert Offley, president and CEO of CentriLogic, in a prepared statement. “CentriLogic owns and operates the data centers so it is not leasing expensive suites from a third party. Our joint teams understand the technical requirements for end-to-end delivery from the data center to the browser and we don’t have to employ costly consultants to deliver the solution.”

With Mothership1, CentriLogic hopes to compete with the large IaaS providers on a price and technical competency level. Considering the continuing price war between Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, it seems unlikely a newcomer to the field can provide not only the breadth of services but also a highly competitive price tag, but CentriLogic is an old hat in the data center game.

Although it’s not likely to become quite the household name of its biggest competitors, CentriLogic and its security-first approach could provide it with a strong customer base made up of organizations that are skeptical of putting their apps and data in the hands of the larger providers.