CenturyLink, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Tier 3, an innovative provider of public cloud services based in the Seattle area. Tier 3's cloud platform is immediately available as "CenturyLink Cloud." In addition, Tier 3's products, roadmap and vision are now the foundation of CenturyLink's cloud strategy and anchor the new Seattle-based CenturyLink Cloud Development Center.

"Our mission is to provide world-class managed services to global businesses on virtual, dedicated and colocation infrastructures. Tier 3's innovative automation and self-service platform are game-changing for our global enterprise clients," said Jeff Von Deylen, president of CenturyLink's Savvis organization. "From greenfield development to mission-critical apps, businesses have a trusted technology partner to seize new market opportunities. This acquisition underscores our continued commitment to delivering the most complete portfolio of cloud services."

Jared Wray, the founder and chief technology officer for Tier 3, will now serve as chief technology officer for the CenturyLink Cloud organization and lead the CenturyLink Cloud Development Center. Leveraging the philosophy and processes at the heart of Tier 3's cloud innovation - including embracing agile DevOps and open-source development - the Cloud Development Center will bring together cloud development expertise and unite CenturyLink cloud technical resources to develop innovative services.

"We founded Tier 3 in 2006 with a vision for cloud services that make life easier for enterprise developers and IT alike. We now have an amazing home at CenturyLink to carry this vision forward," Wray said. "Our platform roadmap will combine with CenturyLink's global network and data center footprint and managed services team to help change the face of enterprise computing."

The new CenturyLink Cloud - based on Tier 3's public, multi-tenant cloud - targets complex enterprise workloads and is user-friendly for businesses of all sizes. With the product's self-service interface, administrators can quickly create and manage highly available public cloud environments. A web services API and Cloud Foundry-based Platform-as-a-Service provide a comprehensive cloud application toolkit for enterprise developers. Recent analyst reports have recognized Tier 3's depth of capabilities and performance.

This acquisition builds on CenturyLink's earlier AppFog acquisition and existing cloud solutions that are complemented by CenturyLink's colocation, managed services and network offerings. The CenturyLink Cloud is available today in nine data centers around the world.

CenturyLink acquired Tier 3 for an undisclosed price.