Death of the apps installer?

One of the great bugbears for developers is the issue of fitting their splendid new applications code to the requirements demanded by applications installers. But could this be about to disappear as a problem? According to David Greschler, co-founder and VP of corporate marketing with Softricity, the answer is a soundly political ?¢‚Ǩ?ìmaybe?¢‚Ǩ¬ù.

He would prefer the word ‘transformation’ to be applied, for he sees a role for installation-oriented technologies for some time to come yet, but it is also possible to see a wall with writing writ large upon it.

The writing he has in mind is that the general trend towards virtualisation is helping to create an environment where there is no longer any need to install applications on client workstations. “Virtualised applications can have a greater impact than machine virtualistion,” he said. “There are more desktops than servers, and the rate of change is faster, so virtualising applications has greater cost implications in areas such as management and maintenance.”

The specifics concern the launch of Version 4.0 of Softricity’s applications virtualisation environment, SoftGrid. The company has concentrated on three areas of the technology to make additions that could create an environment in which there is no real reason to install applications on individual workstations – certainly for business users.

To make it easier to virtualise just about any PC application, the company has virtualised Windows Services. The relationship between several applications and Windows Services has, till now, made them difficult to virtualise. Now a virtual version of the application will be able to turn on the virtual version of Windows Services when needed, and turn it off when not running.

Full article: The Register