Intergraph Corporation was an American software development and services company, which now forms part of Hexagon AB. It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the world, and operates through three divisions: Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI, formerly PPM), Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure, and Hexagon Geospatial. The company's headquarters is in

Madison, Alabama Madison is a city located primarily in Madison County, near the northern border of the U.S. state of Alabama. Madison extends west into neighboring Limestone County. The city is included in the Huntsville Metropolitan Area, the second-largest ...

, United States. In 2008, Intergraph was one of the one hundred largest software companies in the world. In July 2010, Intergraph was acquired by Hexagon AB.

History

Intergraph was founded in 1969 as M&S Computing, Inc., by former IBM engineers Jim Meadlock, his wife Nancy, Terry Schansman (the S of M&S), Keith Schonrock, and Robert Thurber who had been working with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

and the U.S. Army in developing systems that would apply

digital computing A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

to real time missile guidance. The company was later renamed to ''Intergraph Corporation'' in 1980. One of Intergraph's major hardware projects was developing a line of workstations using the Clipper architecture created by

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. Founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, it became a pioneer in the manufacturing of transistors and of int ...

. Intergraph was one of only two companies to use the chips in a major product line. Intergraph developed their own version of

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

for the architecture, which they called CLIX. In 1987, Intergraph bought the Fairchild division responsible for the chip. In 1997, Intergraph began pursuing litigation against

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

and other computer hardware manufacturers based on the intellectual property developed in Clipper. Intergraph negotiated major settlements with Intel, HP,

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...

and Gateway, earning the company over $394M. In 2000, Intergraph exited the hardware business and became purely a software company. On July 21, 2000, it sold its Intense3D graphics accelerator division to 3Dlabs, and its

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''worksta ...

and server division to

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

. On November 29, 2006, Intergraph was acquired by an investor group led by

Hellman & Friedman Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) is an American private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts as well as growth capital investments. H&F has focused its effort ...

LLC, Texas Pacific Group and JMI Equity, making the company privately held. On October 28, 2010, Intergraph was acquired by Hexagon AB. The transaction marks the return of Intergraph as part of a publicly traded company. As part of the Hexagon acquisition, Hexagon moved the management of ERDAS, Inc. from under Leica Geosystems to Intergraph, and Z/I Imaging airborne imaging sensors from under Intergraph to Leica Geosystems. On December 2, 2013, the geospatial technology portfolio was split out from under the Intergraph Security, Government and Infrastructure division to form the Hexagon Geospatial division. On October 13, 2015, the Intergraph Security, Government & Infrastructure division was rebranded as Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure. On January 9, 2017, the Intergraph Government Solutions division was rebranded as Hexagon US Federal. On June 5, 2017, the Intergraph Process, Power & Marine division was rebranded as Hexagon PPM. On June 6, 2022, the Hexagon PPM division was rebranded as Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence.

References

External links

{{Hexagon AB Companies based in Huntsville, Alabama Software companies based in Alabama Software companies of the United States GIS software companies