Intergraph

Intergraph Corporation is an American software development and services company.

It provides enterprise engineering and geospatially powered software to businesses, governments, and organizations around the world. Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine (PP&M) and Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I). The company’s headquarters is in Huntsville, Alabama, USA. In 2008, Intergraph was one of the hundred largest software companies in the world. In 2010, Intergraph was acquired by Hexagon AB.

History
Intergraph was founded in 1969 as M&S Computing, Inc., by former IBM engineers Jim Meadlock, Bob Thurber, Keith Schonrock, Terry Schansman and Meadlock's wife, Nancy. The group had been working on the Saturn rocket for the Apollo program. M&S Computing assisted NASA and the U.S. Army in developing systems that would apply digital computing to real-time missile guidance.

From this initial work, M&S Computing was among the pioneers in the development of interactive computer graphics systems in the 1970s. These allowed engineers to display and interact with drawings and associated alphanumeric information. The first system sold was a mapping system for the Nashville/Davidson County local government which was installed in 1974.

In 1980, M&S Computing changed its name to Intergraph Corporation, reflecting its involvement in interactive graphics. The first interactive CAD system, Intergraph Graphics Design System (IGDS) quickly became an industry benchmark, and the basis for the MicroStation file format, the PC-based CAD product owned by Bentley Systems, of which Intergraph was a part-owner.

The corporation became publicly owned in 1981, trading on the NASDAQ market under the symbol INGR. Intergraph began producing its own computer hardware based initially on VAX-based hardware and ultimately using its own Clipper chip (acquired from Fairchild Semiconductor) for a line of workstations that ran CLIX, their version of UNIX. This was the basis for a powerful and successful hardware business that eventually became a springboard for Intel and Windows NT-based workstations. Intergraph expanded its product line to other software areas such as electronics and printed circuit board design, electronic publishing, mapping & GIS, technical information management, dispatch management (E-911), architecture and building design, plant design, and image processing and photogrammetry systems.

In 1990 Intergraph reached the $1 billion plateau for revenue and joined the Fortune 500. In 1993 the company discontinued work on its proprietary Clipper microprocessor and turned toward development of software for Intel chips. A year later it introduced the first Pentium-based workstation and the first multi-processor workstation, utilizing the Windows NT operating system. In 1997 it filed a patent infringement suit against Intel. In 2002 Intel made an agreement to pay Intergraph $300 million to settle the case.

In 2000 Jim Taylor was named CEO. On July 21st of that year, Intergraph sold its Intense3D graphics accelerator division to 3DLabs, and its workstation and server division to Silicon Graphics. R. Halsey Wise succeeded Taylor as CEO in 2003.

On November 29, 2006, Intergraph was acquired by an investor group led by Hellman & Friedman LLC, and Texas Pacific Group and JMI Equity, returning the company to private hands.

Organization
At present (2008), Intergraph consists of 2 divisions:
 * Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I)
 * Process, Power & Marine (PP&M)

SG&I is the larger division with roughly twice the revenue of PP&M.

SG&I has been known to support open file formats, illustrated by Intergraph's membership in the Open Geospatial Consortium.