INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: Trace Systems
Otto Hoernig 3rd
President and Chief Executive Officer
Trace Systems
Q: Can you tell us about your background?
A: I have spent more than 15 years in the satellite and wireless data communications business sector serving the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence community, as well as multi-national peacekeeping organizations worldwide.
Before launching Trace Systems, I led the growth and expansion of Spacelink International for over 12 years. We provided commercial satellite communications systems and services to DoD customers. Spacelink evolved to providing our defense customers end-to-end communications solutions—from CONUS points of presence to OCONUS forward deployed locations. As a defense contractor, we built a global operation with more than 100 employees and annual revenues in excess of $90 million. In 2005, we sold the company to Engineered Support Systems Inc. [ESSI], which was then sold to DRS Technologies. I spent about a year and a half working with ESSI, then DRS, to integrate Spacelink into their businesses and to help develop a strategy for the combined communications line of business.
Q: What did you like best about your experience at Spacelink?
A: The people and the international experience were by far the most rewarding aspects of Spacelink. We were a family business that considered its employees, customers and industry partners as extended family members. Also, I’ve always enjoyed the international environment and have visited our employees and customers whether in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan or Iraq to earn a first-hand perspective on our operations.
Q: Why start a new company after such a successful sale of Spacelink?
A: There is a void in the marketplace for the capabilities we offer, and the customer community, [which] I have built a strong trusting relationship with over the past 15 years, needs a reliable source for integrated “tactical edge” communications solutions. Also, although selling Spacelink was a great experience, I am now enjoying the other side of the M&A transaction. We are looking for good companies that compliment the DoD’s vision for total battlefield visibility and situational awareness.
There is a significant need for improved situational awareness— from the depot to the Pentagon to the foxhole. Information superiority will allow our warfighters to better execute their missions and reduce risk. There are a number of technologies that can enable improved information gathering, sharing and joint interoperability at the tactical edge, and I wanted to help advance these objectives by drawing on my past experience.
We are working with technology that can enable military commanders to not only know when devices or objects of any kind have been received or sent out of their installations, but also the technology can give commanders visibility over their locations. We’re not wedded to a particular technology—we are using a whole array of technologies—from ad hoc wireless networks and satellites to RFID and wireless sensor networks. We believe that it’s not the technology that determines the way warfighters act in combat, it is the other way around: Tactical tasks dictate the right combination of solutions. This approach gives us a particular strength as an integrator because we can look for the best option to suit an agency’s particular needs.
Q: What is the business model for Trace Systems?
A: Like Spacelink, we plan to make the DoD market our main area of focus. My executive team includes former Air Force and Army officers and experienced defense contractors as a sign of that focus. Trace is a systems and services integrator that offers end-to-end solutions to its DoD and homeland security customers. We want to remain very responsive and flexible in our ability to meet the military’s evolving needs and to have the appropriate contracts and channels to reach them. If there was any secret to our success at Spacelink, it was our responsiveness to our customers’ needs. Trace Systems will also be focused foremost on customer responsiveness. I don’t know of any other way to run a business.
Q: What’s your objective for Trace Systems?
A: We want to be the integrator of choice for tactical edge networks in the DoD, offering a winning combination of satellite and wireless communications, as well as RFID and wireless sensor networks. Government agencies are seeing an increasing demand for reliable, integrated wireless network technologies that support mobile, fixed and tactical communications requirements. We want to provide solutions to government decision makers who face network technology challenges that impact defense and homeland security programs. Our comprehensive systems and technology integration, engineering, information assurance and support services address these needs.
Q: Can you describe more fully the market that Trace Systems is aiming for?
A: Broadly speaking, DoD and Department of Homeland Security tactical edge needs. They include elements of communications infrastructure, such as wireless, mesh and ad hoc networks; solutions for the security of borders, perimeters and facilities; tracking mobile assets, personnel and resources; monitoring asset health, the environment and other conditions; and geo-fencing of facilities, borders or predicted paths. What we’re about is providing wireless networks solutions out at the tactical edge along with accompanying communication and information enterprise infrastructures that ultimately provide actionable information to users whether they’re in a CONUS command center or a mobile tactical unit out at that tactical edge. ♦
