I've been spending the this and last week preparing slide decks for the upcoming TechMentor Conferences, to be held in Brooklyn in September and Las Vegas in October.

One session that I've spent a lot more time on than I planned is titled How to Automatically and Rapidly Deploy Software in a Small Enviornment. For this session, I planned to pull together as much introductory knowledge as possible about the steps necessary to do software packaging and automated distribution.

But there's a problem.

The more research I've done into this topic, the more I'm realizing that the real advances in the world of software packaging happened about three to five years ago. SInce then, consolidation in the market has eliminated many of the old-school packaging applications to just a few (Altiris, InstallShield, and a few others). None are easy to use for the IT generalist. All are famously expensive.

Now don't get me wrong. All of these tools are great, designed with enterprise needs in mind. But the thrust of this session (and the need I percieve in many environments today) is in teaching automated software delivery for the little guy.

Software packaging isn't an easy task. You've got to be completely comfortable with the Windows registry and file system. You have to truly understand the real meat behind the flash and bang that we see as Next, Next, Finish. These are not easy skills. Yet tools back in a few years ago like WinINSTALL and SMSInstaller were relatively easy to use, incredibly fullly-featured, and usable by generalists. Nowadays, the only packagers I can find are designed out of the reach of even IT Professionals, designed for installation developers. And, again, the cost for all are out of reach for the regular SMB environment's needs.

What is needed in today's market is a freeware or open source solution that enables a few easy-to-use features needed by today's small IT environments:

• The ability to scan an MSI install file to identify the silent switches.
• The ability to scan an MSI install file to identify potentially configurable variables.
• The ability to perform a "diff" on a machine, comparing the result before and after a software installation and compiling the result into a silently-installable package.

That's really it. At this point, I plan to use the WinINSTALL LE version found on the -- get this -- Windows 2000 media for demos in my session. I haven't found any better solution today that's easily found and used by small environments.

If you've got better ideas, please let me know. As I see it, the state of low-cost software packaging utilities right now isn't all that exciting.