One more domino in the lineup of independent software distribution and change management providers fell this morning when BMC Software Inc. announced its plan to acquire Marimba Inc.
The stock deal, valued at about $239 million, follows the earlier acquisitions of Marimba rivals Novadigm Inc. by Hewlett-Packard Co. and On Technology Inc. by Symantec Corp.
The Houston, Texas-based BMC will extend its management reach beyond servers and networks to encompass the desktop with the Marimba desktop change and configuration management tools, as well as its patch management option. BMC officials said the acquisition boosts its Business Service Management initiative by providing enhanced discovery and configuration management functions. It also brings automated asset, change and configuration management to BMCs Remedy IT Service Management offering.
“The Marimba business will be an important extension of our BSM capabilities as this acquisition unites key technology processes to provide a more complete solution to our customers change process and configuration management problems,” said Robert Beauchamp, BMCs CEO in a conference call this morning.
“Its a business service management problem were trying to solve,” echoed Jim Grant, vice president and general manager of the Remedy business unit in Sunnyvale, Calif. “You cant orient on one data center geographically. Todays data center extends beyond the firewall. Of course you have to manage to the desktop,” he added.
BMC will also pursue server consolidation and change management opportunities with Marimbas policy-based server management offering.
Marimbas technology brings to the table “a newer Java-based architecture” along with “policy management capabilities to automate what were doing,” said Grant, who added that Marimba also brings “a good reputation in the marketplace.”
The trend toward acquisitions of change and configuration management providers by larger players is an acknowledgement that it is an important problem to solve, said Grant.
“What are the combination of technologies that work well together that are important to solve this problem? You will find BMC has the answer,” said Grant, hinting at later integration news to come once the acquisition has closed.
Marimba, a $38.9 million company, brings an installed base of some 200 customers. The acquisition, expected to close in BMCs second fiscal quarter, will bring Marimba under the Remedy business unit. Marimba President and CEO Rich Wyckoff is expected to stay on to lead the unit once the acquisition is completed.
BMC this morning also reported net income of $36.9 million for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2004 or 16 cents a share on revenue of $400.2 million—a 5 percent revenue increase over the same quarter one year earlier.
BMC missed its earnings estimate provided in January by 3 cents, primarily due to a write-down for an equity investment, executive severance and higher-than-expected commission expenses related to an increase in deferred maintenance revenue.
For its first fiscal quarter of 2005, BMC expects to generate revenue in the range of $345 to $355 million and earnings per share of between 12 cents and 16 cents. For the full 2005 fiscal year, BMC forecast revenue of $1.52 billion and earnings per share of 77 cents.
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