Water Management Systems was founded from the Stanford University Sensor Working Group.

PeterTsepeleff, the Founder and CEO wanted to apply Wireless Mesh Sensor Networks to commercial products. After many meetings with the members of the Working Group, Stanford Professors and Venture Capitalists he decided to apply the technology to agriculture, and fields in particular, because of the current open field radio technology and the close proximity to the company’s headquarters to fields.

Using the premier high technology law firm, Fenwick and West, the company incorporated as company in Delaware in October of 2004. The company’s world headquarters is in San Ramon, California which is approximately 45 minutes from Napa and Modesto.

The initial team recruited Dr. Vahe Manugian, who has his PhD in Parallel Computing, as their CTO, David Klitzke, former Senior Manager of software development at Sun Microsystems and Kimberly Cornett, an MSEE from UC Davis, and a PhD Candidate at UC Davis. (Kimberly also is a Watson Fellow where she studied vineyards in France and Israel). Dr. John W. Suh and Anshuman Sharma joined the team in Early 2007.

For their Board of Advisors, Water Management Systems, recruited the Director of the Stanford Working Group, the Director Stanford MEMS Sensor Laboratory and the Director of the Stanford Wireless Sensor Laboratory. In addition to these distinguished professors, Dr. Pat Bowan, (who did the original Intel mesh network studies) from the Ministry of Agriculture in Canada, and Dr. Alan Lakso, from Cornell University were added to the Team.

As the company was first formed the staff members had extensive meetings with Bob Steinhauer, who at that time was Senior Vice President of Operations at Beringer, Light, Temperature and Humidity were important to both advisors. Mobility also became a factor and the company incorporated this feature into the product. Finally, ease of use and the ability to view the status of the field anywhere in the world was a key feature.

After one year of development the company completed its first system. In a year and half Water Management Systems was operating a live sensor system at Beringer’s Big Ranch Road field in Napa, California. In Water Management Systems’ third year the company developed a production system, called the Climate Genie™ for the monitoring of microclimates in fields. The system operates on double AA batteries, is wireless, mobile, and includes up to 3 soil moisture sensors and a digital temperature and humidity sensor. The system broadcasts field data to any computer or web based PDA or mobile/cell phone in the world. The Water Management Systems’ systems have been in continuous operation at Beringer’s Big Ranch Road field in Napa, since April, 2005.

Water Management Systems is now in production and has installed systems in the San Joaquin Valley, Carmel Valley and Napa Valley.