Software Installation Still Tricky

As valuable as Systems Management Server (SMS) is for installing software centrally and automatically, software installation under SMS is still far from easy, mainly because the actual installation process is not handled by SMS. (For more information on application installation support in Windows, see “Windows Application Installation Improves” on page 3 of the Feb. 2003 Update.)

The process is difficult for several reasons:

Silent install needed. With any central software distribution product, the goal is to have most applications install with no user interaction (“silently”). This means that all information needed to install the application must be supplied as part of the package, such as the installation path, which components to install, license terms acceptance, and so on. Achieving this goal is difficult, especially since different users and different computer configurations may require different options. Furthermore, many developers never designed their application’s installation routines to run silently. Although SMS customers can freely download and use the Microsoft SMS Installer tool to repackage other software products so that they install silently with the correct options, this is not a trivial task.