Hey all. First time poster. I work in IT for a relatively small company. Recently my boss asked me to look into software deployment applications. Things like MSI Studio.
The idea is this. When we get a new computer, setting it up can take more time than we'd like. Lots of applications that need to be installed and it gets to be a bit of a pain. We have imaging software (Symantec Ghost), which works well for mass distribution of identical machines like it was for my last job, but at this company, the employees tend to have a computer customized to their needs, so the machine model and exact combination of applications change from computer to computer, making ghost images less useful than one might think.
Another issue is the deployment or updating of software for computers already in use by the company. We use Active Directory, which my boss says can help to this end, but it would require an application like MSI Studio to personalize the installation of the distributed software.
So ideally, I would like something like MSI Studio that allows for the streamlined deployment and updating of applications locally and/or on a business network.
My main hesitation for MSI Studio is that it's pretty ridiculously expensive. Anyone know an app that would solve my problem? Freeware would be nice.
