Exclusive Interview on Application Packaging with Gartner Research Director, Ronni Colville

What is the current state of the application packaging market?
The application packaging market is a result of Microsoft's de facto strategy- the standard around Windows Installer technologies. This has been widely available since 2000, but with all of the current Windows migration efforts in place, enterprises are now taking the opportunity to refocus on the benefits repackaging their applications to take advantage of Windows Installer. Today the market is comprised of only two to three vendors, despite representing a highly critical piece of the overall configuration management process. Enterprises have been struggling with this process for so long that it is almost to their benefit that the choices are limited, forcing them to hunker down and figure out which one to use. This is a difficult task because the vendors appear very close in their technology approaches.

What are the problems that packaging and conflict management help solve?
Unlike servers, the users treat their systems as personal ones instead of business systems. To date, there has been little success around standardization of desktops. Everything ranging from the personalization on screensavers, where things are loaded, what things are loaded, and what versions you have. It is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem, but to date there has been little success in desktop standardization within enterprises.

Conflict resolution becomes critical in the sense that you can pre-test and pre-run in a virtual sense the installation of applications, before they actually reach a myriad of different user environments; in which case you can significantly diminish the outage or problems that might arise on an installation. This is the biggest component of packaging now, providing packaging capability. The packaging vendors themselves add a test virtualization capability, which becomes the pivotal piece of packaging and installation. Determining whether the application will work once installed and testing all types of packaging- home-grown and shrink-wrap- is key, because the ISVs are not thinking that they have to worry about 16 other applications that may use a DLL or another file in common. The virtualization test modules that the packaging vendors supply offer a way of creating exception scripting around what might be a conflict between different applications.

How can packaging and conflict management technologies help achieve ROI?
Packaging technologies do have an ROI. Every investment that IT makes, whether it is in configuration management or any other enterprise management tool, should have an ROI. A packaging tool is a piece or a subset or a component of the overall configuration management process. The ROI for packaging and conflict management is probably one of the faster ones than some of the other enterprise management tools, because you can easily quantify the time and costs from prior migrations and prior application installations outages that IT has had to contend with. Previously, IT did not have the facility to actually pre-test something before the application is installed other than with intensive manual efforts.

What strategies should organizations adopt with regards to Windows Installer technology?
The strategic direction that all organizations need to keep an eye on is Windows Installer and look to incorporating that in all their applications packaging for desktops. Not every enterprise can get every application packaged in Windows Installer, because of some of the complexities around conflict resolution, as well as older operating systems and older applications that still exist in an enterprise. We currently have many clients who are still in a hybrid environment, where some applications are based upon Windows Installer and some are not. These hybrids are fine if you take the opportunity to revisit every time you churn the desktop, repackaging your applications in a Windows Installer interface.

How should organizations decide on the number of people to dedicate to software packaging and conflict management resources, allocation of resources?
There is no specific number or algorithm, this will vary based upon how complex and heterogeneous your desktops are- the more applications you have, and the more desktop combinations of those applications, then the more people you need to staff for packaging. Around two years ago, packaging was predominately a function of the guy who did software distribution. There was no specific packaging role then. Instead, whomever handled the software deployment configuration management would also do the packaging and testing. But due to the complexity around Windows Installer, it now justifies its own existence of a staffing allocation. Enterprises that have not taken any consideration around desktop standardization will have the hardest time determining that number. Enterprises that have thousands of applications without taking the opportunity to weed out the multiple versions of the same application, determine how many applications are really supported by IT, or consider what are business-based applications versus user based applications are going to end up needing a lot more packagers.

There is some correlation between the number of people, the number of applications, and the complexity of the desktops. However, that varies based on how standardized their desktops are. The number is going to relate to these two parameters in particular, with a few other periphery things to consider like what operating systems you have. How many use Windows 2000 or XP? Is there 95 or NT in there? Each of those requires somebody to sit down and think about how to package up an application. There is no specific number, instead it is the considerations for how to staff as opposed to how many to staff.

What steps should companies be taking today? What are the best practices when dealing with packaging and conflict management?
Today, best practices include starting from the bottom, which is, looking at the way your desktops are configured today. Is there any standardization that exists? Is there a way to look at packaging as a vehicle for reducing the number of applications supported? Packaging is not the problem – it is all these other things that are the problem. Best practices around packaging are allocating staffing for packaging, setting up test labs for packaging – testing packages before you deploy them – but the precursor to anything around packaging is to understand the complexity of your environment.

Dedicated resources are key. You cannot have the same person doing 16 jobs. Packaging and testing requires a specific skill that now has justified its own existence as opposed to just being another task of another job role. In summary, best practices are a function of dedicating resources, setting up test labs, and allocating enough time to test the applications before rolling them out.

How is packaging related to software distribution?
Software distribution is the vehicle for moving an application from Point A to Point B – or many Point Bs- however many desktops you have. The packager is the component that tells the application what to do when it gets there. Basically, the software distribution tool is the plumbing, and the most important piece of overall configuration management of desktops and laptops, etc. Otherwise, you are back to "herding the turtles" or the "sneaker net" – where you run around and touch everybody's desktop, which is impossible with the number of geographically dispersed desktops. More importantly, it is not efficient. Software distribution tools are the check and balance for knowing and tracking what is actually installed on users machines is correct and allocated for them, based on who they are and what their job function is.

The packaging is the component that makes – once it gets there – the installation successful. Even with the best software distribution tool and processes, if applications are packaged ineffectively, then the overall CM process will be unsuccessful. The success is tied to the user's ability to click on that icon and use the application. Software distribution tools, before desktops got really complex, could do this through scripting, but there was no standard packaging envelope technology. Instead, every vendor had their own approach to the way they did this. Some did a little bit of conflict, but not a lot. But if you changed tools, all your packaging had to be redone again. A benefit of Windows Installer it is creating a de facto standard. If you go from Tool A to Tool B – if you use Wise, it does not matter whether you are using ZenWorks or Novadigm – migration will be minimized. The plumbing becomes transparent. What criteria should we consider when evaluating a packaging vendor?
In a market with so few players, what you need to look at is how the tool works with your applications. You need to sit down and test out your applications with their tool and see how they work. Ease of use tends to be one of the key criteria for the packaging system administrators. You also need to consider vendor viability, their ability to support you in any location – either directly or with channel partners. Consideration includes many of the same things you need to look at in general around vendor evaluation. But, for packaging in particular – the issue is how does their tool work with your applications? Of course testing all applications is prohibitive, but a pilot of sample applications (e.g., home grown, custom packaged, etc.) should be included in the evaluation. Lastly, consideration should be given to how the packaging tool integrates with your SD or CM tool and SD process overall.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a centralized versus decentralized organization for software packaging and distribution?
Very few organizations are centralized completely. The reason for this is that organizations are business-focused today, resulting in enterprises thinning out the way they support a desktop. They will create a very thin image – perhaps the OS, the browser, email, basically the applications that everybody has, then all other applications that sit on top of those applications, will be packaged wherever the business support is.

If your IS is completely centralized – then yes, centralized packaging is good. But if your enterprise has a distributed business focus – which means you have subsidiaries or divisions, or with subsets of IT groups supporting different applications – then those particular business IT folks will package those applications.

Typically what we find is that central IT has to set up a core piece of packaged technology on core applications – browsers, e-mail – whatever sits on every desktop so that it is packaged ubiquitously the same for everybody. They then take that set of packaging and this standard desktop setup, and distribute it out to the remote IT shops, which in turn do their application packaging on top of that foundation to make it as consistent as possible. It is a "layered" approach, and far more common situation than those with centralized IT.

This is similar to application development, where there is rarely ever one application development group. There could be an application development group who does one, possibly two businesses, or one app and not the others. For the same reason, your IT is often distributed that way. Most enterprises have a goal to centralize as much as possible, but, to be responsive to clients, they have moved a parts of IT support especially for desktop management, out closer to the businesses.

Where is packaging technology headed?
Packaging in MSI, or Windows Installer is very immature and still young. Although it has been around for a few years, most enterprises have not really begun to fully utilize it. The technology itself is going to continue to improve and evolve and become more efficient as it is embedded within the OS, but that does not mean you will not need tools like these to provide enhancement. Tools will become increasingly more critical, because the complexity problem will not go away. Packaging will remain a critical component of the success of installing applications on desktops.

Packaging is also important on servers. There, it is not just about Windows. This market is more varied, because there is LINUX packaging, RPM, and others, with each platform having their own sort of packaging. In this environment, Microsoft does not have enough clout to get Windows Installer to be everywhere. As the world becomes more aware about packaging on server platforms, tools from Wise and/or Install Shield can broaden their scope to the server-packaging world. By becoming more multi-platform, that is where the next growth spot could be.

Ronni Colville is a research director in Gartner Research. Prior to joining Gartner, Ms. Colville was a senior networking specialist at IBM, where she assisted Fortune 100 clients and midsize enterprises with development and deployment of their networking architecture. Ms. Colville earned a bachelor of science degree in mathematics and computer science from Pace University.

mail: info@installpac.com