Wise Solutions, Inc. is an American company that makes software tools for creating application installers. Their primary product, Wise was one of the most widely used installation packages for Windows. Their main competitor is InstallShield by Flexera Software. Wise Solutions was acquired and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Altiris, Inc. in December 2003. In April 2007, Altiris was acquired by Symantec Corporation.
Wise Solutions was started as a shareware tool originally distributed via CompuServe. Over time the company grew to roughly 300 employees spread across the headquarters in Plymouth, Michigan and a European office in The Hague, Netherlands. After the 2003 acquisition by Altiris the European office was consolidated with an existing European Altiris office. The Plymouth Michigan office is now primarily a regional software development and support site for existing Wise branded products and some Altiris branded products.
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None. Wise Package Studio was the last remaining Wise product and was End-of-Lifed by Symantec on November 07, 2011.
Supports Windows Installer (.MSI) and WiseScript technologies Wise Installation Studio is the newest advanced installation authoring tool that supports both Windows Installer and WiseScript. Choose from either technology to create installations that support desktop, server, web, or mobile devices. New features include support for virtualization, Microsoft Windows Vista, 64-bit, and Nalpeiron trialware technology. Wise Installation Studio was discontinued on April 19, 2010.
Supports Windows Installer (.MSI) only. Wise Installation Express is a basic installation authoring tool that supports Windows Installer (.MSI). One can create desktop installations that support Microsoft Windows Vista 32/64-bit and configure SQL Server. Wise Installation Express was discontinued on April 19, 2010.
Supports most of the features of Wise Installation Studio along with tools specific to the needs of system administrators looking to deploy installation packages via a software deployment tool. These utilities include installation testing functionality, conflict detection and resolution, vendor installation repackaging, and vendor package customization. A maintenance pack for Wise Package Studio 8 is expected in mid-2012 and will include 64-bit support. End Of Life was officially announced by Symantec on November 07, 2011.
WISE
This is the original script based installer product that gave the company its start. Intended to be a less expensive installation solution for the home developer, this product was originally sold as shareware on CompuServe.
InstallMaker, InstallBuilder, and InstallMaster
This is the renamed WISE product expanded with a new interface and sold at three edition price points. This marked the beginning of selling Wise products in editions.
Wise Installation System
As traditional install script based installation engines became less popular with the introduction of Microsofts Windows Installer technology, Wise Solutions rebranded the InstallMaker, InstallBuilder, InstallMaster product into Wise Installation System Standard and Professional. Wise Installation System 9 was the last stand alone product to be released based on the original technology that started the company.
Wise for Windows Installer
Based on Microsofts Windows Installer technology this product has been offered in many different editions including, Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and an integrated Visual Studio .NET. With MSI files becoming the preferred form of application deployment in recent years the importance of this product grew until eventually it far eclipsed the original Wise Script based product. In 2007 this product line was renamed Wise Installation Studio and the previous Wise Installation System product was included with the product.
InstallManager
This is the first repackaging tool geared toward system administrators. The tool included the ability to take a snapshot of a machine prior to installing a vendor package and repackage that content into a Wise Script file. The repackaging and editing tool for this product was licensed by Microsoft for inclusion as the repackaging tool in the first versions of SMS (the Microsoft SMS Installer is based on version 5 of WiseScript). The retail version of this product also introduced the ConflictManager tool that allowed for conflict detection and resolution between captured packages. This conflict detection and resolution is patented and is the core technology of disputes between Wise Solutions and Installshield.[1] The products compilation and editing interface are built on top of the InstallMaster product.
Application Integration Suite
Application Integration Suite was an attempt at building a homogeneous toolbox for System Administrators looking to repackage and deploy applications. The previous InstallManager tool was extended to give conflict resolution abilities to MSI packages as well as adding additional tools to ease the export of the resulting conflict resolved packages into various application deployment solutions. This collection of tools was packaged together into a process driven user interface called Workbench. The pricing structure for the product coupled with the lack of a robust feature set in the Workbench ultimately resulted in low adoption. This tool was refined and restructured into what is now sold as Wise Package Studio.
On June 27, 2003, Installshield sued Wise Solutions, alleging electronic espionage.[2] The civil complaint listed the theft of nearly 1,000 confidential documents from the Installshield corporate FTP site, including a customer list.[3] Installshield detected the intrusion when decoy customers with addresses planted in Installshield's customer-list started to receive marketing material from Wise Solutions. Reviews of FTP logs showed several connections over a period of 10 months from addresses related to Wise Solutions. This lawsuit also spawned an investigation by the FBI that resulted in the Plymouth headquarters being searched for evidence. The civil suit was resolved in July 2004 and the case was dismissed. Additionally, the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago sent a letter indicating that they did not intend to file criminal charges.[4]
In more recent years InstallShield and Wise Solutions via their respective parent companies have had some disagreements over patent infringement, one of which ultimately resulted in a preemptive patent-infringement lawsuit by Macrovision against Altiris and Wise Solutions in which it not only claimed infringement by Altiris products but also asked (November 2006) for the court to find that it was not infringing on any Altiris or Wise Solutions patents.[5]