Marimba, a software company long salivated over by Wall Street for its potential as the next big IPO, likely will file for an initial public offering on Monday, a person close to the company said.
Terms of the offering couldn't immediately be determined, but Morgan Stanley Dean Witter likely will underwrite the offering, another executive close to the company said.
Marimba, one of the earliest proponents of "push" software, has been a perennial candidate for an IPO. Its founders included members of the team that created the Java programming language at Sun Microsystems. Its financial backers include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- the most influential venture capital firm in technology -- and companies like Compaq Computer.
In fact, the company got so much attention from the financial and technology press that it almost didn't meet some of its expectations.
Marimba makes products that distribute content and updated software over big networks. Its programs are aimed primarily at technicians who have to update software on dozens of PCs operating on a corporate network.
When Marimba debuted three years ago, it became an instant Silicon Valley star. Its products were hailed as innovative and its CEO, Kim Polese, became the poster girl of geeks everywhere. But the attention also attracted competition from the likes of Netscape and Microsoft. Worse, "push" became associated with annoying news screensavers and resource hogs like PointCast.
For the past year, Marimba has been distancing itself from push and pitching itself as a network-management software company. In March, Marimba teamed up with IBM's Tivoli Systems unit, a publisher of network management software, to integrate Marimba's flagship Castanet product into Tivoli's e-commerce management offerings.
