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 Canada early last year and have been working with OpenStack to provide a solution to clients with data residency requirements in Canada,” said Kolybaba.

OpenStack is an open-source IaaS initiative for creating and managing large groups of virtual private servers in a cloud computing environment. In the last year, several major tech companies like Dell and Microsoft have been betting on OpenStack as a way to provide the market with the type of cloud-based infrastructure developed privately by Amazon.  But no one has introduced something similar in Canada. Eventually, Kolybaba said, the big U.S. players are going to want to move into Canada, and will therefore be looking for partners or acquisition targets.

Many Canadian companies, publicly funded groups and government organizations require that their data to be stored in Canada, which gives an advantage to Canadian infrastructure companies whose clients have sensitive data. Other organizations simply want a Canadian solution to their storage needs, said Kolybaba.

Though the company has not yet done detailed market studies, Kolybaba said Cloud A has received “some indication that our challenge at this point would be keeping up with demand.”

Cloud A successfully completed its alpha trials (those conducted in-house) in 2012. In the last few months, it has gone on to conduct private beta testing, which means asking organizations it knows to try it out. Now it is looking for new groups to extend the tests.

The company has hired Sheepdog to build the infrastructure and Dynamic Hosting to administer the hosting side of the business. The company is now being bootstrapped, but Kolybaba said his goal is to move full time to the company along with Godin and two or three others in a few months. Sheepdog’s day-to-day operations are already being overseen by COO Mark Long, he said.

Cloud A is planning a full launch in about three months, and hopes to raise about $500,000 in capital at that time.