Hi, > isn't ipswitch a big company? is imail not their flagship product? Good point ;-)
Our main business is software management. This includes OS Deployment and Software Deployment and Configuration. We made the experience, that the preparation of a setup has usually a low priority and this task comes at the end of a software project. Even big companies "forget" to offer a silent setup for their customers. If this setup-guy never worked in an enterprise business, he has no clue about software management. The result might be a bad setup routine. Ok, is IMail a product for a mass rollout? Of course not. but an automated setup can save extremely time and money in case of an emergency. With IMail 8.1x we could use our regular system based on a before/after snapshot. An IMail Packages needs about 2 Minutes to install and after the deployment its' ready to use in a productive environment. A crashed server can be rebuild very fast. Personally i would go for an MSI based installation. With a really easy effort, all needed parameters could be included in a "answer"-file or mst-file. Setup's based on InstallShield are usually not really flexible. Take a look at the easy setup routine based on MSI of SmarterMail. Our package was made in a hour and it runs perfectly. After the introduction of this stupid licensing system (Sorry, but this piece is crab), only a silent setup is possible. The licensing system creates files at runtime containing several parameters. Those files are only valid for actual machine. This is the reason, why a snapshot is not possible. Like other products, the licensing system should be separated from the application. Again, i have to take SmarterMail as a good example: Without a valid key, it runs as a limited free or eval version only. After adding the key (One location in a configuration file), the products runs unlocked. After snapshotting IMail 2006 at the first time, i realized that the serialisation code resides below the system32 folder of the OS and needs about 15 MB. So, since when stores an application binaries in the folder of the OS? Never, execept the drivers and services. Ipswitch uses InstallShield for all products. Even the simplest product WS_FTP is not really ready for a mass deployment. Reason: serialisation software. At the least, WS_FTP is available without the Ipswitch paranoia programs. With this, my small world is ok. From 100 products, usually 2 or 3 are not ready for a software management tool like we and others uses. For a brand new product i expect that the product is ready for mass deployment. Usually, this is a criteria in the evaluation process and has a big weight. Next week, we want to rollout IMail2006 on two servers, we have to. We have to setup the software by hand and a configuration package will cleanup the mess afterwards. i do not expect, that the silent setup will be back asap. @Ipswitch: Please think about, if InstallShield and the serialisation process is the right choice for the future. Think about MSI, it's much more better. And think fast ;-) ============================================ Am Mittwoch, 18. Januar 2006 um 02:36 schrieben Sie: > isn't ipswitch a big company? is imail not their flagship product? > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Martin Schaible" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Ipswitch IMail Mailing List" <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 8:15 PM > Subject: [IMail Forum] IMail 2006.01 >> Hi, >> With IMail 2006.01 the silent setup as i described last week does not work >> anymore. It doesn't return any error messages, no log, nothing. The setup >> pops shortly up (visible in the task manager) and it quits. Very boring. >> Did anybody at ipswitch test it? >> -- >> Mit freundlichen Grüssen >> -------------------------------------------- >> Merlin Consulting >> Martin Schaible >> Bahnhofstrasse 27 >> CH-8702 Zollikon >> Phone: +41 44 391 30 00 >> Fax: +41 44 391 32 49 >> Mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> URL: http://www.merlinconsulting.ch >> Support: http://support.merlinconsulting.ch >> GPS: N47 20.235 E8 34.226 >> -------------------------------------------- >> News - Neue Produkte: >> .:. NOD32 Antivirus System >> ..:. BlueDragon >> .:. Kiwi Syslog Monitor >> .:. Paessler GmbH >> .:. Sawmill Loganalyzer >> .:. SmarterTools >> -------------------------------------------- >> To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html >> List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ >> Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ > To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html > List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ > Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ ============================================ -- Mit freundlichen Grüssen -------------------------------------------- Merlin Consulting Martin Schaible Bahnhofstrasse 27 CH-8702 Zollikon Phone: +41 44 391 30 00 Fax: +41 44 391 32 49 Mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.merlinconsulting.ch Support: http://support.merlinconsulting.ch GPS: N47 20.235 E8 34.226 -------------------------------------------- News - Neue Produkte: .:. NOD32 Antivirus System .:. BlueDragon .:. Kiwi Syslog Monitor .:. Paessler GmbH .:. Sawmill Loganalyzer .:. SmarterTools -------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
