Wise Scripting
The practice of scripting applications began with the modification of setup programs for network installs. Some of these scripts used PERL others batch files. All had the same general purpose. That purpose was to standardize setup options for corporate deployments and easy the workload of the technicians who previously had to install each application manually.
Wise Solutions has created a proprietary scripting language and used it to assemble a series of tools that help a developer in packaging applications, new and existing, into a customized setup routine.
The capturing and recompiling of these new packages is termed, Wise Scripting or Wise Packaging.
I personally have packaged or performed the QA and manual conflict resolution on approximately 300 applications in the last two years.
- Some of the more well know vendors are:
- AC Nielsen
- Exceed Hummingbird
- Oracle 7.3.4 – 8.1.5 clients
- Microsoft Office 97 & 2000 suites
- Adobe applications
- Remedy Action Request System
- Cognos Impromptu
- Corel Wordperfect
- Haverly Systems HCAMS
- Landmark Aries
- Maurer Engineering
- Microsoft Visio
- Parsons Technology
- Peregrine AssetCenter
- Seagate Crystal Reports
- Platinum Process Engineer
- Adobe Systems Photoshop
- Citrix Systems WinFrame for Windows
- Computer Associates CA-DocView
- JASC Paint Shop Pro
- Persoft SmarTerm Office
- Ulead PhotoImpact
- Wall Data Rumba
Key Benefits
- Corporate Defined Application function and appearance. For instance, within the Microsoft Office 97 Suite, a certain selection of Clip art could be, by default, installed for the Advertising Department while the Financial Department would not have this feature installed.
- Reduced cost in having the Desktop technicians manually install and configure all software in the enterprise. With the use of SMS, Active Directory Group Policies, Intellimirror and other Enterprise Application distribution schema/tools, all software can be remotely installed and configured during the process.
- This provides the environment in which the “Locked Down” user can be controlled by the IT or IS group. This is were the accountability for failed applications and support of the system lies. If you currently have users installing software and constantly down due to inappropriately configured applications, this is the beginning of the solution.
Reference Accounts
Within an organization, there are the population who depend on applications being stable and not affected by the changing environment in their desktop PC. Financial departments have this type of profile.
While at Marathon Oil, I was tasked with working with the “Oracle Client Standardization Team” to create the standard package or script that would deliver an environment to support all 7.3.4, 8.0.5 and 8.1.5 client applications. This was to be deployed in a locked down Windows 2000 client across 10,000 PCs.
While working towards this goal, the team assigned to this effort even had opposition from within their own developer community. They, first of all did not understand the objective and thought it may curtail the control they had enjoyed to this point. Secondly, they did not understand the benefits of standardizing. Once, taught and convinced of it’s merits, a defined and stable environment was packaged and deployed to the intended targets via SMS 2.0.
As an added benefit, Marathon Oil, during the packaging process, was able to define the current application suite and winnow, sift and remove, many applications for which they were paying license yet derived minimal productivity.
From the point they began deploying these thousands of packaged software packages, they were able to maintain a real-time Asset Control system and ensure they were properly licensed for that software in use. This provides real life example as to the many benefits of packaging software for Enterprise Deployments.
