Halifax-based Cloud A, which offers a flexible infrastructure-as-a-service solution over the cloud for Canadian customers, is looking for groups to participate in its public beta test.

Cloud A was formed last year by Brandon Kolybaba, the Founder of Sheepdog Inc., and Dynamic Hosting Founder Jacob Godin , who collaborated with Dalhousie University in developing the product. They identified a need for an OpenStack-based elastic platform in which all the data is stored in Canada to take advantage of the country’s privacy laws.

“We identified the need for a true elastic compute platform in

TitanFile Inc., the developer of a secure collaboration and document-sharing system, has unveiled new features for its product, including the TitanFile Secure Deposit Box, which makes it even easier and safer for clients to receive communications.

Based in Halifax and Kitchener, TitanFile began two years ago as a secure document-sharing platform and launched a new version last autumn that stressed ease of use and flexibility so it could operate seamlessly with other products on any device. The company is now enhancing that most recent version by adding new features.

The big advance is

St. Mary’s University’s Masters of Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, which will launch this autumn, has already accepted eight students and is still receiving applications.

The Halifax university hosted its official launch of the program at the Sobey School of Business on Monday, and program head Dawn Jutla said she’s delighted with the eight students in the program so far.

“The quality has far exceeded our expectations,” said Jutla, saying some applicants have already landed patents on products they want to commercialize, while others have already started businesses

Best known for its real estate website TxT2look, the team at Citrus Mobile Solutions is staffing up for a range of projects for clients and looking for that “holy-grail” product that will make its name.

The team is headed by Brian Perry and John Gallinaugh, who over the past five years have launched several ventures and projects focusing on short message service marketing applications, also known as SMS, for smartphones.

What that means is they use texting as a marketing tool.

They gained national attention during the 2010 Winter Olympics when they launched a service that sent updates

Late last week, Robert Foley and Suhaim Abdussamad from Startup Kitchen posted the second Atlantic Canadian Startup Monthly, in which we discuss what's going on in the community around the region.

We've expanded the panel to include Janice MacPherson of Made in NB  who brought in some great insights on crowdfunding and East Coast Startup Week. We also touch on the Newfoundland startup scene

Trevor MacAusland, the Executive Director of PropelICT, won the Special Recognition Award at the 15^th annual KIRA Awards in Fredericton last night in recognition for his success in the developing the Launch36 accelerator.

Under MacAusland’s leadership, the program since late 2011 has accepted 20 startups and launched 18 of them. These companies have raised $5 million, are employing 70 fulltime staff and most are generating revenue. The accelerator has developed into a regional resource, as the graduate companies have come from all three Maritime provinces.

And MacAusland served notice

The startup community in St. John’s is continuing to move forward this week with the opening of its co-working facility and a partnership with Startup Canada.

The innovation community in St. John’s ranges from 150-member multi-nationals like Verafin to single-entrepreneur startups like FundUni and dozens of companies in between. But since late last year, the community has been coming together to accelerate growth. It formed StartupNL late last year, an association that gained more than 100 members in its first few months. Now community members have formed Startup St. John’s, to become one

Jevon MacDonald’s tremendous speech to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday night was the third reminder I had seen in a week that Atlantic Canada needs to develop the technology community.

MacDonald, the chief executive officer and co-founder of GoInstant and a Salesforce vice-president, delivered a keynote speech that outlined his own career, the development of the Halifax tech community and the need to develop that community.

As I listened to it, I couldn’t help think about two new reports that came across my computer monitor in the last week. The first was a Statistics Canada

As Volta opens its doors for the first time this morning, the thing that really pleases its organizers is that they’re no longer the only ones doing the organizing.

That task is being undertaken more and more by the 10 tech startups occupying the shared office space on Spring Garden Road in Halifax. And that’s just fine by Jevon MacDonald, TitanFile Co-Founder Milan Vrekic, regional venture fund manager Patrick Keefe and the other people who have put the project together.

“I think the cool thing about Volta is how the community is already taking ownership of it,” said MacDonald earlier

In the last two years, I’ve sat separately with Iain Klugman and Gerry Pond and listened to their divergent views on developing start-up communities in Atlantic Canada.

Klugman, the CEO of the Communitech accelerator in Kitchener, Ont., said in a recent interview that we should look at Halifax, not Atlantic Canada, as a start-up community because such a community has to be “something you can get your arms around.” He added that Atlantic Canada could have several communities, but they should be more localized than one big regional family.

Pond, the celebrated New Brunswick-based investor