It is over a week since Thomas Cook snapped up the Intellectual Properties Rights for the BlueSky Travel Systems software which runs a large part of its reservation system, yet much of the saga remains a mystery.
In a statement sent to Tnooz this week, Thomas Cook responded to a number of questions arising as a result of the acquisition of “certain assets” last week.
The tour operating giant says it cannot say how long the team which was created within a week of BlueSky going into administration will be working on the iTour project.
“The team is providing temporary support until we have decided how to proceed in delivering the services,” says the statement.
Cooks is also tight-lipped as to how many of the original BlueSky employees will be retained to run the project, saying only it “understands” the administrator has dismissed a number of staff already and the 25 members of the team parachuted in to run the project are “contractors on short term contracts” to provide “short term support”.
As one senior figure close to the issue said this week: “There is an unfortunate whiff of the temporary about this whole thing.”
For former-BlueSky staff still waiting anxiously for information regarding their September salaries and other monies owed, Thomas Cook appears to be pushing the issue back towards the administrator MCR, indicating perhaps that it will not be involved in helping with redundancy terms.
However, Thomas Cook did finally shed some light on one area of the story which it had, until now, refused to discuss.
As Tnooz highlighted two weeks ago, question marks surfaced in the weeks following the collapse of BlueSky as to the role of the “prime contract holder” for the upgrade project.
In response to a question regarding whether IBM will continue to be the prime contract holder, Thomas Cook now says:
“We are currently in discussions with a number of vendors about the services that are required over the medium and long term.”
This would appear to indicate a negative response to the question.
Not sure how temporary this is. Thomas Cooks’ acquired assets appear to include laptops, phones, all the hardware and the use of the old Bluesky office. Also, the man heading the new team of 25 is still talking about expanding the team (although this could, of course just be a way of protecting himself from the ever-increasing hostility directed towards him.)
On the other hand, I suspect Thomas Cook are now getting to a point where they realise how impossible this all is, having failed to secure the services of a number of key Bluesky employees. This is a lose/lose situation whichever way you look at it.
rumour has it the guy putting together the “25″, was putting together the team before Bluesky went into adminstration, and with the knowledge of TC.
I think this is common knowledge. He was calling people into his office to offer them jobs before the announcement was made. Some of them were so thrilled with the contract rates they were being offered, they just couldn’t resist telling everybody. I have never seen anything so badly handled in my life. This really wasn’t the person that Thomas Cook should have entrusted this to.. but more fool them…