Marimba's Push Away From Push Pays Off

Once synonymous with push technology, Marimba Inc. has been trying to reinvent itself as a serious systems-management vendor. In fact, the company had been written off as dead, along with push.

"They were barely on our radar a year ago," says Hurwitz Group analyst Richard Ptak. Marimba's changeover, which included renaming its products in April, seems to be paying off. The company is crowing that Procter & Gamble Co. chose Marimba to manage its software configuration and content on all P&G desktops, servers, and notebooks.

William Scheid, manager of global workplace technology for P&G, says Marimba took pre-sales support to an extreme. "They were extremely responsive to helping us get things where they needed to be," says Scheid. Much more so, he says, than other vendors competing for the multimillion-dollar deal. He declined to be more specific about the contract. P&G is putting Marimba's software through live tests in Asia and is making plans to roll out the software companywide.

This is a good contract to have, Ptak says, but to continue to grow, Marimba needs partners. "They are still self-centered," he says. "They think they can do it all themselves."

Scheid wants to use the Marimba software as a way to cut support costs for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Linux. Previously, P&G had a mix of homegrown and point-management software that was insufficient for global management. P&G is also hoping Marimba's software will reduce end-user app configuration, which presents problems for help desks.

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