Scient, one-time darling of the internet consulting world, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US.

The company said it was also selling many of its assets to professional support services company, Smith Brandon International (SBI).

A statement on Scient's website said that the assets being acquired are almost all people and existing contracts. It says that the SBI 'acquisition' will allow it to continue working with its customers, who in turn will be working with exactly the same Scient people.

Further to this, SBI will also provide some 'debtor-in-possession financing' of $4.9m to Scient, the statement said.

The move is a bit of a shocker from this former stock market sweetheart. But times are tough.

As Scient said, it is selling up to SBI in the hope that it will enhance Scient's ability to deliver superior services to its clients with an even greater range of capabilities, combined with being part of a firm with strong financial performance and solid financial backing.

That has always been the problem with Scient of course: it has been unable to balance its books. Hiring a workforce as skilled as it once had costs money, and since the dotcom balloon burst the contracts coming through the doors of many of these internet consulting houses have all but dried up.

Over the past year to eighteen months, Scient has struggled to get its ship in order - culling staff, undertaking reverse stock splits. But obviously this has not been to good effect.

Nor were the rather tiresome attempts - mirrored throughout the industry - to reposition itself as a big five consultancy. All of the internet consultants tried it, dumping their table football games for MBA students as soon as things got tough, and the majority of them screwed it up.

Quite how this is going to pan out for Scient is a good question. If it is getting bankruptcy protection and some financing it sounds like the company is going to pull through, or at least that it has plans to enable that.

But if the people and the contracts are going, it is not certain what kind of company will emerge from the other end.

Is SBI going to swallow the remnants too? Is Scient, the brand, going to go up in smoke? It is not clear and will probably only be clear when the pair have jointly presented their case to the Bankruptcy Court in New York.

That is just the first of many challenges ahead.