MAKING APPLICATIONS WORK
MSI Re-Packaging formatTraditional or legacy software installations in the past were developed in a variety of ways. Setup developers designed their install programs to concentrate on their own products which often impacted on programs that were already installed on the PC.
With legacy installations in the past, there might be two applications using the same file, but one might be designed to run on an older version. This led to “DLL hell” where the installation of one application would cause other applications to stop working.
Inevitably the process of ‘rolling back’ or uninstalling the problem program resulted in system down time and - in more sever cases - having to rebuild the PC completely and reinstall all your software.
Several years ago Microsoft set out to address these and other issues. One of the emerging solutions was the development of Windows® Installer technologies.
Windows 7 Migration
As you move your business to Windows 7 desktops or Windows 7 VDI hosted desktops you can dramatically simplfy the migration process using Microsoft App-V. By 'sequencing' applications using App-V you can roll out to similar but different platforms. As many organisations consider moving to 64bit, there is still a requirement to run 32bit software. App-V offers you the most flexibilty to sequence your application only once and deploy to different Operating Systems without conflicts, e.g. Windows 7 32bit or Windows 7 64bit. App-V also allows you to run multiple versions of the same software on the same computer concurrently.
Application Virtualisation App-V
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) dramatically simplifies application deployment by wrapping each application in it's own virtualised sandbox environment which prevents applications from conflicting with each other and gives you the ability and flexibility to deploy your 'Sequenced' application without the requirement to regression test against other installed applications.
Deploying App-V sequenced applications is as simple as adding the application to a Management Server, deploying it using your own in-house deployent tools, or even deploying via CD or DVD using a traditional MSI-based approach. Application dependencies for your application can be virtualised along with your application, providing you with a smaller footprint Operating System build and simplified management.
