Broker K2 wound down as directors return with Vesper Technologies

K2 reached a settlement with Cisco last year over alleged trademark infringement

Stockport-based broker K2-IT has entered voluntary liquidation after the management team did not see a long-term future in "the box-shifting" model.

K2-IT hit headlines in November last year when it fell victim to Cisco's onslaught against unauthorised traders.

In its most recent financial report on Companies House, K2 reported a turnover of £59m for the 12 months ending October 2014. No accounts were filed for the following 12 months.

All creditors are expected to be paid in full, a liquidator's note states, with K2 set to be dissolved in November.

The management team behind K2 are now running Vesper Technologies which director Allan Kaye said takes more of a services approach than K2.

"There is not a great deal to say about K2-IT," he said. "It has been wound down as we do not see a long term future in the box shifting business model.

"Vesper Technologies is a highly technical and consultative organisation focused on providing low cost, software defined compute, storage and networking solutions built on 'open' commodity X86 hardware.

"Our great strength is in the alliances that we have built with our portfolio of highly-relevant vendors in this space. We are working closely with them to develop customised propositions to take to market."

Vesper is Dell OEM Partner and a Gold Intel Technology Provider, and also carries vendors including Microsoft, VMWare, and Edgecore Networks.

Kay explained that an integral part of Vesper's business model to "bridge the gap" between ODMs and their end users, an issue that Gartner said back in 2014 could hamper their growth.

"The rise of the ODM has been widely publicised through the activities of hyperscale datacentre operators such as Facebook, Google and Rackspace," he said.

"This has clearly evidenced that there are huge commercial advantages to transacting directly with an ODM, however it is widely accepted that these vendors are not as mature as the established OEM providers and that it is more difficult for them to transact with larger volumes of end users."