Donald Soults

Chairman & Chief Technology Officer, Roadshow International

by Patricia Schnaidt

Roadshow International, maker of routing and scheduling software for the trucking industry, lives and dies by mobile data. Soults, a 30-year computing veteran and founder of Roadshow, is the advance guard of mobile applications.

With Soults' software, drivers use handheld computers running Roadshow to communicate wirelessly with their dispatchers, enabling them to stay in touch at all times. No more stopping at pay phones. Drivers can let their dispatchers know if they're going to make all of the deliveries on their plans; dispatchers can keep their drivers' delivery plans current to the minute. Roadshow's mobile data application isn't for the geek-chic trucker. It becomes an integral part of a trucking company's business process.

A mobile, wireless application is vastly different from a tethered, LAN-based one. Timing, coverage and range contribute to the challenge of keeping drivers and dispatchers in sync. Soults' software must interface to multiple wireless infrastructures as well. Putting the show on the road isn't for the weak-hearted. The high cost of mobile systems and the systems integration needed to bring together the computers, the applications and the services into a single solution to hold back the market. Soults says, "We're all set for the dam to break."

Most Important Trend: Mobile data systems justified on productivity, not time

Most Disturbing Trend: High cost of mobile data systems

NetPeeve: No visibility for mobile apps

Non-Computer Reading: Disc ipline of Market Leaders, by Treacy & Wierserman

September 15, 1995