Start-Up Mothership1 Enables Developers to Build Next-Gen Cloud Applications and Services

Mothership1 announces the launch of its global business, a development and deployment platform for cloud applications and services with compelling cost and technical advantages over incumbent solutions.

Mothership1 is a joint venture between CentriLogic, Inc. and Incubaid focused on offering a more affordable, comprehensive choice for software developers, VARs and SMBs, compared with leading providers such as Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, Microsoft and Google.

Mothership1 is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and Lochristi, Belgium.

“This launch shows that competition in IaaS is alive and well and that the opportunity for selling infrastructure and services has broadened past pure-play IaaS providers and has entered the mainstream of the managed infrastructure service market,” says Carl Brooks, research analyst, Internet infrastructure services, 451 Research. “Mothership1’s ability to set a price well under market rates and still operate profitably also speaks to some of the relative weaknesses and opportunities missed by the largest providers.”

CentriLogic, a provider of international hybrid hosting, cloud computing, and managed data center solutions for midsize companies to large enterprises will host the infrastructure powering the Mothership1 platform from its ISO 27001:2005 certified facilities in North America and Europe, with expansion into CentriLogic’s Hong Kong facility planned for later in 2014.
 
Robert Offley is chairman of Mothership1 and brings 20 years of management experience in the IT industry. He is currently the president and CEO at CentriLogic. Prior to founding CentriLogic in 2007, he was president and CEO at Fusepoint Managed Services (now Savvis/CenturyLink) and former CEO of PSINet Canada, one of the first Internet service providers.

Incubaid is the first and only pure cloud incubation centre with a proven track record of helping to create successful businesses including Dedigate now part of Terremark,  Hostbasket now part of Telenet, DCT now part of Symantec, Q-layer and VirtualBox both now part of Oracle.

Incubaid chairman Kristof De Spiegeleer is CEO of Mothership1 and brings over 15 years’ experience within large International companies including leading positions at PSINet, Sun Microsystems  and Symantec.

“There are only really three types of cloud platform we see in the market,” says De Spiegeleer. “The first are simple virtualisation clouds based on a basic VMware, Microsoft or Open source hypervisor hosted remotely in a data centre. The brands may change but the cost, performance and technical capabilities of these vanilla platforms are well understood and limited in scope.

“Then we have vendors like Digital Ocean, which offer a simplified version with better consumer pricing but limited advanced features and many technical constraints that restrict advanced development, especially the lack of Windows support.

“Lastly, we have Amazon as the oldest and largest incumbent in cloud with a solid platform but it is still relatively expensive, especially when you add in what we feel are core capabilities such as backup and service resilience.

“Instead, Mothership1 offers a unique platform for building clouds. With Mothership1 we include the advanced API support, flexibility and performance to rival Amazon but at a price point close to Digital Ocean to finally give cloud developers a credible alternative.“

Mothership1 will be delivered from CentriLogic data centres with availability zones offered in Toronto in Canada, North Carolina in the United States, and Bracknell in the UK and will expand later to all of the CentriLogic data centre facilities including Hong Kong.

Customers can specify where data and traffic is retained as well as geographic replication and failover. The system uses a ‘Cloud Space’ concept where cloud creators can effectively build a virtual remote data centre with units of compute, storage, RAM and SSD.

The Cloud Space handles administration functions like server replication, backup and recovery managed across datacenters. Each Cloud Space is protected by a defense shield that is configurable by the customer proving enhanced security and extended control over traffic routing within the virtual infrastructure.

In addition, the platform has support for API’s to allow complex control over VMs and storage with supports for an S3 API to allow developers with experience in Amazon to migrate to Mothersip1 with minimal reskilling.

“Sceptics might dismiss our claims but the logic is straightforward,” says Offley. “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. CentriLogic owns and operates the data centres 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 centre to the browser and we don’t have to employ costly consultants to deliver the solution.”

 Pricing for Windows
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