The Hive Group

The Hive Group

Company type	Private
Industry	Software
Founded	2000
Fate	Merged with Visual Action Software (January 26, 2015)
Headquarters	Richardson, Texas , United States
Products	Honeycomb (enterprise treemapping application)
Number of employees	<50

The Hive Group operated as a privately owned software firm established in 2000 and headquartered in Richardson, Texas. The company focused on visualization solutions tailored for operational intelligence (OI), business intelligence (BI), and complex event processing (CEP). Its flagship product was an enterprise treemapping application named Honeycomb, which was adopted by prominent corporations and government organizations such as Intel Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Sun Microsystems, the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps, and the United States Coast Guard. Notably, Ben Shneiderman, who originated the treemap concept, contributed to The Hive Group as a member of its Board of Advisors. The organization maintained a workforce of fewer than 50 employees.

On January 26, 2015, The Hive Group combined operations with Visual Action Software.

Industry recognition – Early adoption by the United States Marine Corps

In 2003, the United States Marine Corps implemented Honeycomb-driven treemaps throughout all operational theaters via its MERIT system. This pioneering deployment encouraged broader integration of treemapping technology across the Department of Defense. MERIT earned multiple prestigious awards, including:

• US Department of Navy eGov Award
• US Department of Defense CIO Award (runner-up in team category)
• Excellence.Gov - Federal CIO Award
• Government Computing News Award
• International Society of Logistics Field Award
• The Association for Enterprise Information Excellence in Enterprise Integration Award
• Defense Logistics 2008 Technology Implementation of the Year

These accolades highlight The Hive Group’s significant contributions to enhancing government operational intelligence and logistics visualization tools.

Public sector

The Hive Group is listed as a small business within Central Contractor Registration (CCR) and is also registered in the United Nations Global Marketplace.

Patents

The Hive Group possesses several patents concerning treemapping innovations, including US Patents numbered 7,027,052; 7,076,742; 7,346,858; and 7,509,591.

Board of directors and advisors

The board of The Hive Group comprises:

• Bill Jesse, Chairman at Jesse Capital Management
• Ben Shneiderman, creator of treemapping and founding director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, College Park
• Joseph P. Urso, CEO of Aerus LLC and Chairman at Inthinc
• Pierluigi Zappacosta, Chairman of Digital Persona and Sierra Sciences; Founder and former CEO of Logitech

External links

• Visual Action Software Website
• Treemap sample from The Hive Group
• Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland
• The Hive Group Gallery
• The Washington Post: Decoding the Internet's Raw Data
• USMC MERIT Joint Release Announcement
• Finding the Needle in the Haystack
• A Picture Worth a Thousand Control Loops
• London 2012 Olympics – Interactive Medal Standings