Apache HiveMind is an services and configuration microkernel. Its features are also referred to as Inversion of Control (IoC) Container or Lightweight Container. The adoption of HiveMind in an application ensures the use of certain design principles which improve encapsulation, modularization, testability and reusability.

• Services: HiveMind services are POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) that can be easily accessed and combined. Each service ideally defines a Java interface it implements (this is not mandatory). HiveMind takes care of the life cycle of services. It instantiates and finalizes services and configures each service just as necessary. HiveMind lets services collaborate with each other via dependency injection, so that the service code itself is released from the task of looking up dependencies.
• Configuration: HiveMind allows you to provide complex configuration data to your services in a format you define. HiveMind will integrate the contributions of such data from multiple modules and convert it all into data objects for you. HiveMind configurations allow for powerful, data-driven solutions which combine seemlessly with the service architecture.