Flexera Software, the leading provider of Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and enterprises, today announced the launch of InstallShield 2014. The new release simplifies installations for cloud and other complex Web/server applications, enhances support for high-DPI displays, supports accelerated release cycles common in agile development processes, and makes testing more efficient by automatically provisioning virtual machines.

“We sell software in a competitive market, so we make sure our users have no reason to look at other products,” said Gerard Nicol, CEO at GazillaByte. “InstallShield has been giving our users a fast and flawless installation experience for the past 15 years, and with the release of InstallShield 2014, we are completely confident that we will continue to exceed expectations, especially in the cloud and virtualised environments. Every software experience starts with installation, Flexera Software provides us with the best of starts.”

Automated Cloud and Web/Server Installations via Microsoft Web Deploy
Microsoft Web Deploy has quickly become a pervasive packaging format for web applications. However, Web Deploy does not include a customer-facing interface for deployment and its ability to bundle prerequisites, runtimes, and machine configuration tasks is limited. InstallShield 2014 is the only installation development solution to solve this challenge, enabling faster and more efficient installation of web applications to Microsoft® Azure™ and Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) using Microsoft Web Deploy. Now customers have the flexibility to deploy web applications to their choice of infrastructure—to local machines, to remote servers in the datacenter, or to Microsoft Azure in the cloud. InstallShield also supports deployment of Microsoft Azure SQL Databases, enabling customers to install databases to the cloud and support hybrid cloud scenarios by deploying database scripts directly to Microsoft Azure SQL databases.

“Microsoft Web Deploy simplifies the migration, management and deployment of IIS web servers, web applications and web sites,” said Chris Van Wesep, Director of Server & Tools Marketing, Microsoft. “InstallShield 2014’s support of Web Deploy is of tremendous value to application developers, who now have a streamlined process for packaging their applications to the cloud – and their customers, who simply want their applications to install easily and work right out of the gate.”

Enhanced Support for High-DPI Displays and Modern Touch-Screen Interfaces
Since Apple® first introduced Retina displays, the PC market has responded with even higher resolution displays and support for touch interaction on desktops, laptops, and tablets. This new generation of PC devices presents challenges for users when interacting with software that doesn’t account for Windows DPI scaling behavior. The installation of these applications can be error prone and negatively impact the customer’s installation experience and, as a result, their first impression of the product. InstallShield 2014 helps eliminate this problem by ensuring all InstallShield project types are DPI-aware, creating an optimized user experience for customers installing software on high-DPI and touch-screen devices.

“We use InstallShield to simplify the installation of a complex application suite with both Web Service Configuration, Windows Service installation and management,” said Matthew Gerega, Manager of Product Development at Four Rivers Software Systems. “We count on Flexera Software to understand the evolving needs of installation developers and to deliver enhancements reflecting our real-world requirements. InstallShield 2014 promises to be another outstanding release to support our business.”

Help End Users Keep Up with Accelerated Release Cycles
Agile development practices are being increasingly implemented, and as a result many application producers are delivering more frequent product releases. To keep up, users are looking to simplify how to find, download and install new versions. InstallShield 2014 Suite/Advanced UI installations can address this desire by automatically checking the Internet for the latest version of a setup any time the installation is run.

Installing new versions is also challenging when there are multiple instances installed on a single server. InstallShield 2014 adds support for developing upgrades that are able to detect the presence of multiple instances on target systems, and provides end-users with options to select which instance to upgrade.

“We’ve been using InstallShield since the late 90’s to deliver Windows based products to our customers,” said Henry Steinbeck, Installation Engineer at Synergex International Corporation. “The InstallShield user interface and features such as XML editing and InstallScript custom actions, allow us to easily manage a number of installation projects that reliably deploy Synergy. We have been very satisfied with InstallShield.”

Provision Virtual Machines for Installation Testing to Improve Productivity
Application producers need to quickly test the installations they have created. The rise of virtual machines has made it possible for developers to access custom prepared test environments, but the provisioning of the virtual machine and staging of the application for testing still requires several manual steps. InstallShield 2014 now supports provisioning virtual machines from the InstallShield Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for testing installations – reducing testing time and eliminating manual steps by automatically provisioning virtual machines. Developers can choose test image snapshots, power on virtual machines, and stage setups directly from the InstallShield IDE automatically at build time, or on demand. This new capability supports VMware® vSphere, VMware Workstation, and Microsoft Hyper-V®.

“InstallShield supports and enables the latest trends in desktop computing, like high DPI displays and touch interaction, as well as complex web/server application installations to the datacenter and cloud,” said Maureen Polte, Vice President of Product Management at Flexera Software. “This latest release of InstallShield demonstrates why the market continues to see us as the clear leader in the installation space. We are relentlessly committed to ensuring our customers can provide a seamless installation experience – regardless of the environment in which the software will be deployed and regardless of the type of device on which it will be run.”