1. When people ask you what does Wise Package Studio do, what do you tell them?

Wise Package Studio helps organizations prepare applications prior to deploying them to desktops, laptops, handheld devices, or servers.

Let me explain exactly what that means and why it's important. While software development teams and software vendors may spend a lot of effort testing their applications, there are a number of steps that software deployment teams should take prior to putting an application into production.

These steps include: (1) analysis of the application to understand the specific requirements of the application and the end users, (2) package creation, or repackaging, in order to get the application into a format (usually Windows Installer, or MSI) that can be modified by the deployment team, (3) customization, or changing the package so that it meets an organization's specific requirements, (4) validation to test for compliance with industry or corporate specifications, (5) conflict resolution to ensure that the application coexists with the other applications in production, and (6) system testing to ensure that the application functions as expected and that all the necessary files and components are included with the package.

Following this best practice process helps companies reduce the failure rate of deployments, reducing help desk calls and increasing end user productivity. Wise Package Studio provides all the tools and project management capabilities an organization needs to implement this process.

2. Can you provide a quick history of Package Studio for us?

The history of Wise Package Studio can really be traced back to 1996, when Wise licensed the code to Microsoft used to create the original SMS Installer. This was the first product in the market that was exclusively for system administrators and became a really popular tool.

We soon realized that system administrators would benefit from a tool with more robust capabilities, so we introduced our own administrator-focused product in 1998, which included the first ever conflict resolution tool. This tool provided a systematic approach for finding and resolving potential conflicts between applications, such as mismatched .DLLs or overwriting of registry entries. In early 2001, we released a major new version that included several innovations, including built-in best practices and SmartMonitor, which provides extremely accurate repackaging not possible before. Later in 2001, version 3 of Package Studio was released. This release included several features designed to help large-scale enterprises better manage packaging projects.

Version 4 was released in November of 2002 and featured some major new functionality including Application Gateway, a web-based portal for managing the application request and approval process, Virtual Capture, which provides a new way of repackaging that eliminates the typical "clean machine" requirement, and Test Expert, which is the first time there's been a way to easily and completely do functional testing on an application. Version 4 also introduced the concept of the Wise Software Repository, a centralized way to manage information about all applications used in an organization throughout their lifecycle.

Throughout Package Studio's history we've also focused on working with all of the major distribution vendors. We currently have integration with just about everyone, including Microsoft SMS, Novell ZENworks, IBM Tivoli, Altiris, On Technologies, and Novadigm.

As the history shows, Wise has really been a leader and an innovator in this market. We've put a lot of effort into creating new features that provide real value to our customers. And even though we've been heavily imitated, the market clearly views Wise as the leader, as demonstrated by the popularity and strong sales of Package Studio.

3. What is Wise Package Studio's strongest feature?

While each of the many tools included in Wise Package Studio provides significant value, the product's strongest feature may be its comprehensive conflict management capabilities.

The Wise Software Repository stores information about the resources that comprise all of the applications and software components used throughout your organization, including Windows Installer packages, script-based installation packages, group policy objects, device drivers, as well as your organization's base operating systems and core images.

Package Studio's ConflictManager uses this information to resolve potential file and registry conflicts between a newly packaged application and other applications and software components that are likely to co-exist on the same desktop. ConflictManager does not assume that Windows Installer's file versioning rules will eliminate any potential file conflicts, since there may be situations in which a later version of a file is not fully backwards compatible with earlier versions. ConflictManager also identifies Windows Installer component-level conflicts, as well as conflicts related to ODBC settings, NT services, device drivers, shortcuts, the path, and the autoexec.bat and config.sys files.

ConflictManager provides two automated methods for resolving conflicts. The Resolve wizard sequentially steps through each identified conflict, allowing administrators to determine how conflicts should be resolved on a case-by-case basis. Package Studio also enables administrators to use standard or customer-defined conflict resolution rules to automatically identify and resolve conflicts. Package Studio's conflict resolution rules provide the only fully automated means to identify and resolve conflicts.

4. What do you believe is Wise Package Studio's most underrated or misunderstood feature?

The least understood fact about Wise Package Studio may be the robust nature of the product's installation capture functionality.

Package Studio's SetupCapture tool supports three different installation capture methods. One method is the traditional snapshot technology, which takes snapshots of the packaging machine before and after the installation of the vendor package.

The second method is SmartMonitor, which is an innovative technology first introduced by Wise in April, 2001. SmartMonitor monitors the vendor installation at the API level and records system changes as they happen. SmartMonitor is considerably more accurate than the traditional snapshot method and quicker as well, because it does not require system scans before and after the installation of the vendor package.

The third method is Virtual Capture, which is a revolutionary capture method that enables installations to be captured on a non-clean machine. Virtual Capture re-directs installation of the vendor package to a clean O/S image contained in a virtual "black box" on the repackaging PC. Virtual Capture can instantaneously capture installations, because contents of the black box are known beforehand and it is not necessary to scan the entire hard drive. One primary advantage of Virtual Capture is that it eliminates the time-consuming practice of re-imaging the packaging machine after capturing one vendor package and moving on to the next package.

Alternatively, SetupCapture can be used within a traditional virtual machine environment (e.g. VMWare) to provide comparable functionality. However, a significant advantage of Virtual Capture over this approach is that Virtual Capture is included with Package Studio and does not require any additional software license fee.

5. What do you believe makes Wise Package Studio stand out when compared to other products?

Wise Package Studio contains several features that differentiate it from the competition. Some of Package Studio's distinguishing features are obvious to the casual observer, while others are less evident.

One key aspect of Wise Package Studio is the fact that the Windows Installer packages that it produces are fully compliant with Microsoft's Windows Installer standard. The Windows Installer packages created by Package Studio do not contain proprietary elements, such as dialogs, that cannot easily customized for use in your environment.

A second distinguishing feature is the fact that Package Studio's Windows Installer Editor provides a graphical user interface that enables administrators to specify alternative search locations for purposes of self-repair, install on demand, etc. This feature is especially useful in situations involving roaming users, because it enables administrators to specify an alternative search location that corresponds to an environment variable mapped to the server that is closest to the location from which the user logged on the network.

Another unique attribute of Package Studio is the fact that the product contains the WiseScript Editor, which is fully functional script editor that can be used to create script-based installations or custom actions that can be included in Windows Installer packages. Package Studio offers the best of both worlds, by supporting both Windows Installer and script-based technology.

Other features that one should examine closely when comparing Package Studio to the competition include Wise's multi-database support, user security that allows disabling of specific functionality for groups of users, application request portal, automatic generation of exclusion lists, Virtual Capture technology, and Wise's MSI Script feature.

6. What do you see in the future for Package Studio?

Obviously, being the market leader and frequently copied by the competition, we have to be a little careful in answering this question. So let me answer it by saying that we're going to continue to do the things that have made Package Studio the industry leader that it is today.

This includes listening to our customers. We have a strong history of working closely with our customers to understand their needs, and we're going to continue to do this so we can find more ways of adding value. How can we make our customers more productive? How can we help the IT staff become heroes within their company by significantly reducing cost of ownership and improving the reliability of applications?

We'll also continue to focus on innovation and being first to market with new capabilities that extend our vision of making applications work better. Wise was first to market with a solution specifically for system administrators, first with a commercial Windows Installer editing tool, first with a conflict management tool, first with a functional testing tool, first with a .NET installation tool, first to integrate with every leading distribution system, and the list goes on and will continue to go on in the future.

Finally, we'll continue to partner with the other companies and products that our customers work with every day. We know that our customers don't package applications in a vacuum. The integration that we provide with products like Microsoft SMS, Novell ZENworks, Altiris Deployment Solution, ON Command CCM, Novadigm Radia, and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET make our customers lives easier and the packages they deliver more reliable.

See more on Package Studio here at AppDeploySM