Mobility reseller Mobil8 goes bust

Rival MobileIron partner Bridgeway offering stranded customers free support

Rivals are stepping in to offer a lifeline to customers of Mobil8 after the security and mobility reseller voluntarily wound itself up.

Insolvency practitioner Marks Bloom confirmed to CRN it was appointed as liquidator of the London-based MobileIron partner, whose customers included two Scottish councils, on 5 June.

One of Mobil8's largest MobileIron contracts, which covered 16,000 devices across 47 schools and colleges in Angus Council Education Authority, has already been picked up by rival MobileIron partner Qolcom.

Another of MobileIron's top UK partners, Bridgeway Security, is offering upgraded and free replacement support services to Mobil8 mobility customers which transfer their existing contracts to them.

An industry source claimed Mobil8 was undone by its inexperience in the mobility market and that some customers had become dissatisfied.

"The death spiral was over weeks and months," they said.

"Mobility is hard. The resellers involved in this market that can do this are few and far betweeen and Mobil8 was caught out by the time and effort it takes to bring a successful mobility project. There are some customers that were quite badly burned."

According to its website, Mobil8 offered the only pan-government accredited mobile device management service for information levels up to IL3, which was powered by MobileIron and available on G-Cloud 5. Shetland Islands Council, for which it deployed an enterprise mobile IT solution, was among its other prominent customers.

Its other vendor partners included Acronis, Microsoft, Apple and Box.

Keith Reading, managing director of Qolcom, said he suspected Mobil8 had approached enterprise mobile management (EMM) from the wrong angle.

"We have picked up Angus Council where Mobil8 failed this month," he confirmed.

"I don't know what happened there but their focus seems to be on compliance and security only. In EMM you need to focus on applications and user experience, not just security, or else you're dead in the water."

Bridgeway said Mobil8 customers that transfer their contracts to it will benefit from free round-the-clock support for the duration of their current maintenance period.

"Working closely with our vendor partners, we will ensure that customers transferring from Mobil8 experience a seamless handover and the same high levels of service and support that we already provide to our existing customers," said Bridgeway managing director Jason Holloway.

Takling to CRN, Holloway added: "It's a shame, but we are doing everything we can to look after customers affected by this."

A representative of MobileIron, said: "We are working closely with our channel partners to assist our customers during the transition period. Our strong network of channel partners will support Mobil8 customers and ensure they continue to receive a high level of service."

A representative of Marks Bloom told us: "I can confirm Mobil8 entered liquidation on 5 June and A J A J Whelan was appointed as the liquidator."