Contents • • • • • • • • • • History [ ] Attachmate Corporation [ ] Attachmate, founded in 1982 by and focused initially on the IBM terminal emulation market, and became a major technology employer in the Seattle area. Based in Bellevue, Washington, the company became one of the largest software companies in the world, with offices in more than 50 cities in North America and in 30 countries. The company made several acquisitions, through mergers and purchases, to expand its range of host access hardware and software.
Attachmate served 80% of and companies, with over 13 million users worldwide. Attachmate's major development locations included their headquarters in, an office in, and a facility in,. In the early days, Attachmate focused on for PCs with some hardware 3270 boards as well.
WinINSTALL LE - A free software packaging and application installer management solution. Scalable Software is a software company headquartered in Austin. Previously, it was best known for its software deployment product WinINSTALL. Comment installer Photoshop sur Windows 7. Lorsque vous essayer d'installer Photoshop sur Windows 7, il est tout à fait possible que vous en arriviez à vous taper.
Attachmate invested heavily in its sales and marketing organization worldwide in the early 1990s and quickly grew its market share from 3rd in the host-connectivity market to 1st with its EXTRA! Personal Client product.
The company continued to grow organically as well as through acquisition of KEA Systems (makers of KEAterm VT340 and, and KEA X software), and DCA (makers of IRMA line of, INFOconnect, Crosstalk communications software, and OpenMind ). Later, the company also acquired The Wollongong Group (makers of Pathway TCP and Emissary). After the acquisition of DCA, the company quickly dominated the 3270, 5250 and VT marketplace, and built its revenues in excess of 400 million in 1995 - as compared to roughly US$40 million just five years earlier. A Senior Management transition led by incoming CEO Jim Lindner made an attempt to create a unified product strategy and take the company public. The strategy received positive reviews from customers and the press initially but eventually stalled as a clash between Pre and Post DCA-merger management destabilized product development and Frank Pritt took back the helm in July 1996. Bill Boisvert, formerly of, was the next president from January 1998 until his resignation in October 2000 after a year of layoffs and flat revenues.
4 WinINSTALL MSI Packager Professional WININSTALL SHARE OPERATING SYSTEM The WinINSTALL share is a shared hierarchy of folders and files. As a result, the. This file contains the full build of WinINSTALL 7.5 and the WinINSTALL 7.5 MSI packager application. The files WI75HF1_243880.EXE and WI75RCHF_243883.EXE have been.
The next stage of its history was marked by tight fiscal management and managing to the bottom line. As revenues were impacted through the bursting after 2001, Attachmate was hit with successive rounds of layoffs. In 2001, the development center was closed; in June 2002 the Cincinnati development center was closed and the company's VP of Development was fired. On April 18, 2005, it was announced that three investment companies, Golden Gate Capital, Francisco Partners, and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners, would buy Attachmate. Attachmate would be merged with long-time competitor WRQ, whom the investors had bought previously.
Attachmate no longer sells or supports,, or ISCA SDLC hardware adapters, or provides driver downloads. In February 2007, they sold their remaining hardware inventory to Alpine Computer Systems, a legacy equipment reseller, and refers customers to them for sales and service on hardware adapters and drivers. [ ] In 1981, Doug Walker, Mike Richer and Marty Quinn founded Walker, Richer & Quinn (WRQ) to integrate microcomputers with existing IT environments. The company set its sights on the Hewlett-Packard market, launching the first commercially viable for the. Based in Seattle, Washington, WRQ was one of the 20 largest software companies, and consistently ranked in Fortune magazine’s “100 Best companies to Work for in America,” and Washington CEO magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For.” [ ].
Two companies, and, were spun off by WRQ in 2000 and 2001, respectively, and are operating successfully today. On 6 December 6, 2004 it was announced that WRQ had been purchased by an investment group consisting of, and. Attachmate and WRQ merger [ ] The same investment group proceeded to buy Attachmate as well. The agreement for the sale was made on 18 April 2005. WRQ and Attachmate had been long-time competitors in the host emulation business when it was announced that the companies would be merged. The merger was completed on 3 October 2005 and the new company was named AttachmateWRQ.
In June 2005, shortly after the was made official, AttachmateWRQ announced that its corporate headquarters would be located in WRQ's, location. The vacated headquarters of Attachmate in the neighborhood of were quickly filled by, who already occupied part of the building.
The company continued to support both Attachmate and WRQ product sets (which overlap in many cases) until products could be merged or replaced. NetIQ acquisition [ ], founded in 1995 by Ching-Fa Hwang, Her-daw Che, Hon Wong, Ken Prayoon Cheng and Thomas R. Kemp, was a company that provided and software.
It provided businesses worldwide with to monitor, analyze, and optimize the performance, availability, and security of infrastructure. Its flagship products included AppManager and Security Manager. The company headquarters were in, with about 900 employees worldwide. Their symbol was NTIQ.
NetIQ's toolset included systems, security, and Administration software. On April 27, 2006, AttachmateWRQ announced an agreement to acquire NetIQ for about 495 million USD, and that the deal would close in 90 days. NetIQ would be merged into AttachmateWRQ, creating a single company with US$400 million annual revenue and over 40,000 customers in 60 countries. On June 20, they announced that NetIQ shareholders had approved this purchase, and the acquisition would be complete by the end of that month. On July 5, 2006, both companies released a press release announcing the closing of the deal. The new company would do business under the name Attachmate Corporation.
OnDemand acquisition and sale [ ] On March 7, 2006, AttachmateWRQ announced that they had acquired. OnDemand Software develops an award-winning product called, which is for desktop management in IT environments.
This product is similar to AttachmateWRQ's existing product. On June 30, 2008, announced in a press release that they had acquired the WinINSTALL business unit (substantially all assets of the former OnDemand) from Attachmate.
Novell acquisition [ ] announced in November 2010 that it had agreed to be acquired by Attachmate for US$2.2 billion. On April 27, 2011, The Attachmate Group announced the completion of the acquisition of Novell, Inc., a leader in intelligent workload management, under the terms of the definitive agreement disclosed on November 22, 2010. On May 2, 2011, immediately following the sale, Attachmate laid off hundreds of Novell employees.
Novell now operates as two separate business units under the Novell and brand names and joins Attachmate and NetIQ as holdings of The Attachmate Group. Certain assets are planned to be sold to, a consortium of companies led. Acquisition by Micro Focus [ ] On 15 September 2014, the British firm announced that it would acquire the Attachmate Group for US$1.2 billion in shares. References [ ].
• Haines, Thomas W. (July 23, 1996),, Seattle Times, retrieved 2009-03-24 • Baker, M. Sharon (November 1, 1996),, Puget Sound Business Journal •, The Seattle Times, January 21, 1998, retrieved 2009-03-24 • Meisner, Jeff (February 5, 2001),, Puget Sound Business Journal, retrieved 2009-03-24 •, Seattle P-I, June 28, 2002, retrieved 2009-03-24 [ ] • Dudley, Brier (March 18, 2005),, Seattle Times, retrieved 2009-03-24 •. 18 April 2005. Retrieved 29 January 2013. 3 October 2005. Retrieved 29 January 2013.
•, Attachmate, April 27, 2006 •, Attachmate, June 20, 2006 •, Attachmate, July 5, 2006 •, Attachmate, March 7, 2006, archived from on June 16, 2006 • (PDF) [ ] •. April 27, 2011. Daily Herald.
Retrieved September 25, 2013. •, Boston Updates, November 22, 2010, retrieved 2010-11-22 •. 15 September 2014. Retrieved 15 September 2014. The Wall Street Journal.
15 September 2014. Retrieved 15 September 2014.
External links [ ] • •, •,.
WinINSTALL LE makes old applications Windows Installer friendly Anything that helps me easily get software onto—and more importantly, off of—my computer makes me happy. So, I like the one-click-does-it-all nature of Windows Installer files (i.e.,.msi files). But Windows 2000 Ready.msi-formatted applications are scarce, so anyone who wants to make extensive use of.msi files needs to create those files.
Fortunately, Win2K Server ships with VERITAS Software's WinINSTALL Limited Edition (LE) tool, which accomplishes '.msi-zing'; unfortunately, you need to do a bit of tinkering to create the perfect.msi file. Why.msi Files? In the old days, you could install an entire application simply by copying a file or two to your hard disk—and perhaps modifying the pathname.
But most of today's applications consist of many files, including an entire program just for installing the application. These setup programs typically do several things. First, they create a program directory or two for the program files and data. Second, they put DLLs on your system's hard disk, but not always in the new application directories; instead, setup programs often put the DLLs in the winnt or winnt system32 directory (even though application DLLs stored in those directories might interfere with the OS's or other applications' DLLs). Third, most applications associate themselves with a file extension and need to store some configuration settings, so the setup program puts the file extension and configuration settings into the registry. Finally, application installers typically put a shortcut on your Start, Programs menu. This list of tasks explains why setup programs are so big—they've got plenty to do.
You don't want to have to carry the setup program and its attendant files to every user's desktop and babysit the setup: You want a nice, centrally controlled, no-user-intervention-required way to install applications. Active Directory (AD) can provide that capability but can't easily use setup files; AD prefers applications delivered in.msi format. However, most vendors don't yet offer their wares in.msi format. So, if you want to use AD to deploy applications, you need to repackage most of those applications in.msi format. Because WinINSTALL LE comes free with Win2K Server (you'll find it in the valueadd 3rdparty mgmt winstle folder on the Win2K CD-ROM), it's likely to be the repackaging solution that many of us will use. Building an.msi Package WinINSTALL LE creates.msi files using the snapshot approach, a tried-and-true method for describing and encapsulating an application.
To create an.msi file for an application, you start with a clean, basically unused desktop PC that I call the prototype—I always use Symantec Ghost or Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS) to wipe the prototype's drive clean and give me a clean slate. Before you install the application, you run WinINSTALL LE's discoz.exe program, which creates a record of the files, directories, and registry entries on the prototype—in other words, discoz.exe creates a before snapshot. Next, you install the new application on the prototype, tweaking and adjusting the program so that it works the way that you want it to. You reboot the computer to 'fix' any registry changes—although often unnecessary, this step never hurts and sometimes helps. Then, you run discoz.exe again. Discoz.exe takes an after snapshot, noting any new files, directories, registry changes, and program shortcuts. Discoz.exe collects all the changes in a location you specify and builds an.msi file to accompany the changes.
The.msi file gives you a package of directories, files, and registry changes, as well as a set of directions for Windows Installer. I'll spare you the click-by-click details of running WinINSTALL LE, save to offer two suggestions. First, when you set up WinINSTALL to do the before snapshot, the program will ask whether you want to do an Enhanced Registry Scan.
Doing the scan is always a good idea, so select that check box. Second, WinINSTALL's Help suggests that you not run discoz.exe on the prototype. Instead, install discoz.exe on another PC and share the program's directory in the second PC's Program Files directory.
Navigate to that shared folder, then run discoz.exe from there. Installing a Package Now, take a look at the.msi file's directory, which reflects the files and structure of the application you want to install. For this column, I created an.msi file of Lotus Organizer 6. That package contained a directory named Lotus, and applying the.msi file causes Windows Installer to create and populate a directory by that name. My package also contained a directory named winnt, which told me that Lotus broke the rules when making Organizer. Examining an.msi file's directory also gives you an accurate measure of an application's footprint on your hard disk—the.msi file contains no compressed files that understate the application's installed size.
After you have an.msi version of an application, you can install the application in one of three ways. First, you can simply double-click the.msi file. Second, you can use the Msiexec /i command to do a silent install of the file from the command line.
For example, the command that shows installs the package pilotdesk.msi from the pilotdesk directory in the apps share on server1. (Like most Windows command options, the /i option is case-insensitive.) Third, you can use Group Policy to create a software deployment policy—a big topic that I can't cover in this column. Some experimentation showed me that double-clicking an.msi file or typing the Msiexec /i command from the command line apparently doesn't invoke the Windows Installer service: These methods didn't install Organizer successfully when I logged on as a user without administrative power.
But when I used Group Policy with my new.msi file to assign Organizer to the same user, then logged on as that user and selected Start, Programs, Organizer, Organizer installed hands-off. I couldn't double-click or use the Msiexec command to install the Organizer.msi file for two reasons. First, Organizer's Setup program places some files into the winnt and winnt system32 directories, and by default, users who don't have special rights can look at but can't add, delete, or modify files in those directories. Second, Organizer's Setup program wrote to two registry keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software. Every user account has its own HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software key, and you can write in your Software key to your heart's content. But only the System account and members of the local Administrators group can write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Why, then, did the Group Policy driven installation work?
It worked because from the OS's point of view, Msiexec didn't run at my user account's request. Instead, Win2K thought that the System account started Msiexec, and the System account can write in the winnt and winnt system32 directories. One reason Microsoft built Windows Installer as a service is so that Windows Installer can run under a user account that's different from the account currently logged on at the workstation. Windows Installer can run even when no one is logged on at the workstation, as is the case with services such as Microsoft IIS. After I used Group Policy to assign Organizer's.msi file to my account, however, I found something annoying: Every time I logged on, Organizer installed itself whether I started it or not. That installation happened because Organizer not only put itself in my standard program menu but also put a shortcut into my Startup folder. The process of logging on tickles that shortcut, causing Organizer to install.
So, I rebuilt the prototype system and the Organizer.msi file, this time removing the item from the Startup folder. The result was a nice, tame Organizer.msi file. Some other applications for which I've created an.msi file have popped up automatically for a different reason: They've had an entry in the less obvious HKEY_CURRENT_USER Software Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion Run subkey. (Some applications might also have an entry in the win.ini configuration settings file, although I haven't seen that happen for a few years.) The moral of this story is that you need to be prepared to rebuild your.msi file a few times, and be sure to test the file each time. Working with What You Have Many people ask me why they must give Administrator-level accounts to users to let them install software on their machines. Now you can see the answer: Like Lotus Organizer, many applications' setup routines write to directories and registry keys that non-Administrator users can't touch.
But applications don't need to put DLLs into system-controlled directories or put registry entries into the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key. (For an example, download Beermat Software's addictive—no pun intended—Dope Wars game at or SkyMap Software's excellent SkyMap Pro planetarium program—created by Chris Marriott—at If you need to use an application that installs DLLs in a system directory, you can try two things. First, try moving everything that the application installed to the winnt and winnt system32 directories to the application's directory.
Organizer still worked when I did that. Second, try renaming the application's subkeys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE (if setup added any subkeys), and determine whether the application will still run. (Organizer wouldn't.) Alternatively, you might add the local Authenticated Users group to the group of users who can modify HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE, although that solution will weaken your system's security a bit. But the best answer of all is to let software vendors know that if they don't build their next version to Win2K-friendly specifications, you won't buy it.