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Marimba Inc. on Monday will launch the next major release of its software change management suite, emphasizing ease of installation and administration.
Dubbed Marimba Six, the release will feature a re-architected installation mechanism to reduce the deployment time for the suite—typically in weeks rather than months—compared to large framework-based tools, according to Kia Behnia, chief technology officer at Marimba in Mountain View, Calif.
The new version will comprise: a core technology layer, control center or administrative layer, and then various applications such as inventory, content distribution, software usage and remote administration.
“The ease of deployment focuses on the bottom two layers to deploy the software quicker and in this release we have centralized the console with a new look-and-feel and wizards,” described Behnia.
Marimba also enhanced the suites policy-based management capabilities to allow administrators to set up policies on what set of applications should be installed on what end points.
“If the applications change, Marimba can automatically bring all those systems to the latest version,” he said.
The Policy Manager will alert administrators of failed downloads, failed patch deployments or problems with access rights, the company said.
The updated version will offer a new dashboard for the policy management function that provides a real-time view of policies, so that administrators can see what the current state of the end-user environment is according to those policies. As the environment changes dynamically, the dashboard reflects those changes.
In addition, the dashboard can be used as a common mechanism for setting policies, checking compliance with policies and noting exceptions to the policies. Managers will be able to take corrective actions from within the dashboard.
Marimba boosted the suites software usage module to show whether an end point is using a piece of software and generate reports that detail how long it has been since an installed application was used. Programs not being used can be uninstalled.
The company also enhanced the tool to be able to remotely install agents on Unix and Linux end-user systems.
Marimba Six is due out in December.
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