Schemasoft, the Vancouver data translation company that Apple just acquired, cancelled a multi-million dollar deal with Microsoft just the day after the acquisition closed.
I spent the evening at Vancouver Enterprise Forum and talked to someone close to the company.
Apparently, although Apple has been Schemasoft’s biggest client for some time now, Microsoft was also a client. Schemasoft, as I reported here used to do a lot of work with clients who needed document translation capabilities. The work Microsoft was asking Schemasoft to do involved document translation for mobile technologies. I don’t have any further details on that. As a side note, all of Schemasoft’s other clients are now being served by another company.
It is interesting to note that as soon as Philip Mansfield, the former CEO of Schemasoft, told Microsoft that he could no longer pursue the deal they had been working on, he was told to immediately destroy all documents that Microsoft had sent Schemasoft during the course of the project.
Some other interesting sidebars:
– All quality assurance activity has been transferred to Apple HQ … primarily to minimize chance of information leaks on new products.
– As soon as the deal closed, Schemasoft employees received all new hardware and software from Apple. According to my source, this included, for each employee, the following:
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– Apple G5 tower computer
– Cinema display (not sure which size)
– PowerBook
Why the PowerBook and tower I have no idea, but yes, I’m envious!