The term „Software Packaging“ identifies those activities
which prepare software so it becomes a „software
package“, which in its final status allows the automated
and unattended installation of software onto a defined
target system - and by the way, also allows the reverse
process, the de-installation of the software.
Software packaging is being used if the manual
installation of software via regular data mediums
(e.g. CD or DVD, etc.) does not make sense. This is
almost always the case in those organization, which
provide their employees with software via large
networks. Simply from a timing perspective manual
distribution and installations of hundreds of software
applications does not make sense in an organization
running thousands of workstations.
Considering
how many mistakes can be made when performing
an installation and how many time is needed to do
corrections, manual installations are not wise from a
factual point of view either.
Managing your software becomes easier and its
environment becomes more robust.
The systems stay
stable and are more reliable after installation as well
as de-installation. You can count on significantly less
inquiries (incident tickets) at your service desk.
Software distribution, which is always independent
from packaging, and the following installation of
software packages are carried out secured reproducible
and systematically following defined and agreed
upon rules.
This avoids a more or less coincidental
execution of installations where the loudest caller
gets served first, where systematic and reproducibility
are absent and e.g. time caused interrupts in failure
cases are regular (“sneaker administration”).
Restore points are clearly defined as well as the interruption of
package installations or their rejects.
All clients run significantly more stable and software
administration costs get cut, additionally the uptime for
users and therefore their productivity gets increased.
An application packaged in the standardized MSIformat
can be used in different target environments
with no or just low change efforts.
This holds true for
some formats of software virtualization (e.g. SVS) as
well. This way, a packaged application could run on
a German PC whilst it got packaged for a British one
(“Package-once-use-many”-method).
Your individual packaging needs are covered
by Raynet for different operating systems, e.g. MS-Windows, Linux, Unix, OS/2, Apple MacIntosh,
etc.
Raynet packages in these formats:
- Microsoft Windows Installer Package (MSI)
- Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS)
- Microsoft SoftGrid (APP-V)
- VMware ThinApp (earlier Thinstall)
- Linux RPM Packages
- Debian Linux deb und dpkg Packages
- Apple MacOS package (pkg) und metapackage mpkg)
» Process» Software Virtualisation» Onsite - Offsite» Packaging Factory