186 | Business World Magazine |
June 2013
sulting company called Data on Air.
“We didn’t have consumer-friendly hand-
sets back then,” says Fresonke. Instead, the
focus in the late 1990’s was on industrial ap-
plications. Among the earliest products that
Data on Air sold was a shoebox-sized con-
traption that allowed for vehicle tracking.
The device enabled utilities, transportation
companies, and other industries to effective-
ly monitor fleet operations. Vehicles could
be readily located through an interface be-
tween the vehicle and its headquarters facili-
tated by an early generation cloud-based net-
work. Meanwhile, Poellmitz had gone on
to found a company known as Cerulean, an
enterprise that pioneered mobile computing
in law enforcement. Cerulean was the leader
in equipping police cars with a laptop com-
puter wirelessly connected to their respective
state databases, allowing law enforcement to
rapidly access warrant information or crimi-
nal background on a vehicle operator dur-
ing traffic stops. It was a breakthrough that
has become so valuable virtually no law en-
