Marimba lands more financing

Marimba is shaking up its budget with a $14.5 million second round of financing, the push technology company said today.

Marimba, which produces software that allows developers to create and maintain applications and services within their companies and across the Internet, plans to use the financing to quickly shift the business from sales and marketing to research and development.

"We could have kept going without this round. We are exceeding our goals for revenues and feel good about our track record," said Kim Polese, Marimba's president and chief executive. "[But] we see a tremendous market opportunity in front of us and this allows us to scale up the business more quickly than we might have without it."

Kicking in their share of the financing were Compaq, PeopleSoft, Lehman Brothers Holdings, National Semiconductor, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Technology Group, Attractor and CTC Itochu.

Polese declined to discuss the private company?s profitability outlook, but noted that its game plan to go public is still intact. No timeline has been set, though Marimba plans to show a string of strong quarters before riding to the public trough, Polese said.

She added that another reason the company sought a second round of financing was to solidify relationships with some of its customers.

Marimba?s products are used by companies such as Meca, which provides online banking to institutions like Bank of America. Marimba?s tools allow Meca to determine the type of computers Bank of America customers are using so that they will be able to conduct online banking.

"Traditionally, applications used to happen within [a company?s] firewall, but now they are being deployed outside," Polese said. "This is a huge market opportunity."