Moka5 Apparently Closes Its Doors

The enterprise mobility tools maker has gone dark; attempts to discern what happened have failed.

• By Keith Ward
• 04/01/2015

Enterprise mobility management vendor Moka5 appears to have gone out of business.

Brian Madden, of brianmadden.com, reported earlier today that he's been unable to contact the company or its public relations firm via e-mail.

VirtualizationReview.com has attempted to contact the company via phone, without success. No one answered at its Redwood City, Calif. headquarters. Calls were routed to voicemail. Attempts to contact sales and support both ended in voicemail, as well.

Madden said that two former Moka5 employees e-mailed him and said they were let go, along with most company employees, last Friday.

The last Tweet from the official Moka5 Twitter account (see Figure 1) was made on March 20, promoting its SkyNet container, a security product for cloud services. Tweeting from the account had been consistent up until that time. SkyNet was in a preview stage of life.

The Moka5 Web site, at least on the surface, appears completely normal. There are no articles, blogs or any other information related to the company going out of business. But Madden pointed out that the "About Us" page has changed, listing three venture capital companies as its "Team." As recently as March 13, Madden reported, five executives were listed on the page, including President and CEO Dave Robbins, and Founder and CTO John Whaley.

In what may be a related issue, Whaley, whose Twitter account is @joewhaley, last Tweeted on March 27. He said: "After my wife passed I've done a lot of soul searching, and I've decided to leave Moka5. Thanks for an awesome 7 years as CTO." It's unclear whether this tragedy is connected to the suspension of Moka5 operations.

Moka5 has a LinkedIn site, which doesn't say anything about the company going out of business. The last update from its Facebook page was on March 4, promoting a cloud computing Webinar. It lists the speaker as "VP of Marketing Kris Bondi." Bondi's Twitter account, @kbondi, shows her Tweeting through today, but no mention is made on her Twitter feed of the current status of Moka5.

Moka5 started life in 2008 as MokaFive, and was an early provider of virtual desktop infrastructure management tools. It was founded by four Stanford University computer scientists. Madden reported that Moka5 had raised $104 million in eight rounds of funding over the years. He said that may have been part of the company's downfall:

"The problem with raising that much cash is that puts a selling price for them in the $200-300m range, which is a figure you only get if (1) your tech is so "change the world amazing" that a buyer wants it and will do huge things with it, or (2) you have $100m in revenue with potential for growth. Unfortunately, Moka5 had neither."

It's currently unknown if Moka5 will resume operations, how many employees were laid off, or what will happen to customers currently using Moka5 products in terms of support.