A Scottish software developer who rejected an offer from Microsoft and went on to co-found his own company in the East End of Glasgow, is poised to strike a million-pound-plus deal with another US technology giant and retain his independence.

Greg Stobie, a self-confessed computer nerd, developed a revolutionary tech- nology that dramatically reduces the size of computer files without jeopardising quality, and 12 months ago he joined forces with scanning specialist Lorne Campbell to form Bridgeton-based Crisp Documents.

Following a £250,000 investment - which the pair sourced by cashing in their pensions and remortgaging their homes - the entrepreneurs have no regrets about turning down an offer from the technology behemoth.

"When Microsoft expressed an interest, it became clear that I might be on to something quite big," said Stobie.

"The way Microsoft wanted it to happen was for me to go to America and set up a new company so they could then buy it. I took some advice, and in the end I was afraid of being stung.

"I was afraid they would take the technology, pay me a small fee, and then just shelve it. Or maybe they would make a fortune out of it, and still pay me a small fee.

"But I'm convinced that we have a revolutionary product, and you could say that rather than Bill Gates in Seattle, I chose Lorne Campbell in Glasgow instead."

In Crisp Documents' inaugural 12 months, Campbell and Stobie say their company has already turned over £800,000 and made a pre-tax profit of more than £200,000 on the back of a string of lucrative contracts that includes archiving 100 years of documents from Weir Pumps, now part of Jim McColl's Clyde Pumps business.

Their technology, called vPDF, cuts the size of colour PDF files to the size of black and white files without losing quality, and the company insists it has the capability to reach 500 million existing Adobe Acrobat and Reader users.

Stobie said the technology can also cut the size of any file, which he believes ensures the product's position among the most sought-after in the marketplace.

Moreover, it allows companies to reduce vastly their storage costs by cutting down on server space, as the world's businesses continue to create mountain of e-mails, documents, spreadsheets, music, video files, and so on, driven by the growth of broadband, computer ownership, consumer devices and business software.

Later this month, Crisp, which has a staff of 15 at its Bridgeton headquarters, expects to sign a deal worth "at least £1.5m" with an unnamed "major US technology company".

Campbell said: "We can't say which company it is at this stage, but I'm fairly certain it is going to result in Crisp Documents opening a US office in the very near future."

Enigmatically, he added: "I also suspect it's going to attract a considerable amount of funding, but it's too early to talk about that.

"So far we've been funded only by our sales and the quarter-million we've raised by cashing in our pensions and remortgaging our homes."

As well as completing a five-million-page indexed digital library for Clyde Pumps, Crisp has also provided solutions for First ScotRail and the British Library, and is also in talks with defence, aviation and education firms.

It also recently struck a major deal with Amec Oil & Gas, allowing them to compress huge amounts of PDF files, scanned images, CAD drawings and high resolution photos into vPDF files, which they could then easily e-mail to clients around the world.

The firm's nine-month contract with Clyde Pumps solved a three-year issue for the company, which had failed to find a solution despite a painstaking international search for a way to easily archive and access documents which date back between 70 and 100 years.

Crisp also recently com-pleted successful trials using marine satellites, and the company is now looking to the US and abroad in a bid to build up its client base in the engineering, oil, building and financial sectors.

Stobie added: "Our product saves money by cutting download charges for remote users while making global office connections faster, and e-mail limits on file sizes are now no longer an issue. "We have completed successful trials to allow super-compressed marine manuals that were needed urgently on board a ship.

"We shrunk the files five times with no loss of quality and ensured it complied with the download limit the ship had.

"We estimate this saved the crew weeks of waiting for guidance from shore."