Novell ZENworks Software Packaging

Overview

Product Highlights:

Convert legacy applications to industry-standard MSI format
Quickly create packages for distribution with Novell ZENworks
Customize MSIs for different user groups

Novell partnered with Acresso to provide AdminStudio ZENworks Edition, a basic version of the award winning AdminStudio Enterprise Edition, with Novell® ZENworks®. The product allows system administrators to prepare reliable Windows* Installer (MSI) software packages for distribution with ZENworks. With AdminStudio ZENworks Edition, systems managers take full advantage of the benefits of MSI and reduce total cost of ownership by simplifying the installation, customization, and management of applications.

Benefits

Prepare high-quality software packages for distribution
Deploy software packages in less time
Improve application reliability
Customize applications to departmental needs

Automatically create deploy-ready packages

AdminStudio ZENworks Edition automatically creates MSI for ZENworks Configuration Management deployments. AdminStudio ZENworks Edition has a Distribution Wizard that does all the detailed work, reducing the time, effort and level of expertise needed to efficiently manage applications.

Rapidly prepare MSI software packages

AdminStudio ZENworks Edition converts your legacy applications to the MSI format with the following tools:

Repackager-repackage and convert your legacy setups into Windows Installer packages
Tuner-customize packages by building Windows Installer transforms for changing features, adding files, or making other modifications
Distribution Wizard-prepares your packages for distribution through ZENworks Configuration Management

By using these tools to convert their applications to the MSI format, you can leverage all the benefits of MSI applications-such as self-healing, installation rollback, installation conditions and transforms-all of which reduce software management costs while improving the overall reliability of an organization's applications.

Automate the repackaging process

AdminStudio ZENworks Edition automatically converts software, including legacy setup files and ZENworks snAppShot AOT and AXT files, to pure MSI packages. You can customize those MSI packages using transforms and automatically convert them to a deploy-ready format for distribution via the ZENworks Configuration Management console.

Create customized packages

Different user groups often use the same application, but that doesn't mean they require the same feature set. AdminStudio ZENworks Edition makes it easy to build transforms (MST) that safely modify MSI packages to meet the specific needs of any user group. MST files provide the distinct benefit of reducing the number of application packages a company requires. For example, if a company has 10 user groups needing 10 different feature sets or other alterations for the same application, administrators don't need to spend time creating 10 different MSI packages. Administrators can deploy the same MSI package to all 10 user groups but with a different MST file applied at runtime for each group.