Office Wi-Fi in the 2000s usually depended on a single controller, an expensive box that every access point reported to. Aerohive got rid of it. Its access points worked together like bees in a hive, sharing the job of running the network, and customers managed them all from the cloud. The Sunnyvale company was founded in 2006. When it went public in March 2014, phones and tablets were flooding offices and schools with new demands for wireless.

A Hive Mind for Access Points

David Flynn and Changming Liu built Aerohive around what it called a distributed, controller-less design. Each access point carried its own intelligence, so a school or retailer could add coverage one unit at a time. Cloud management meant an IT team could run hundreds of sites from a browser. The bet was that schools, stores and branch offices would choose simpler, cheaper wireless over the controller-based gear sold by Cisco and Aruba.

Swallowed by Extreme

Aerohive priced at $10 a share in March 2014 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as HIVE. Competition stayed fierce, and Cisco's purchase of cloud-managed rival Meraki in 2012 had already put a giant on the same path. Aerohive grew slowly and never turned a steady profit. In August 2019 Extreme Networks completed a cash tender offer for the company, buying it for about $272 million.

Cover: Broad Bottom Drones Storming the Hive, James Gillray. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a beehive swarmed by bees.