InstallFree Inc. is a privately held company, backed by
Ignition Partners and
Trilogy Equity Partners, with headquarters in
Stamford, CT and offices located worldwide. It was acquired by
WatchDox
WatchDox LTD (originally called Confidela) is a secure collaboration company which was founded by Noam Livnat and Moti Rafalin in 2008. WatchDox developed the first end-to-end DRM (Digital Rights Management) File Sync and Share platform.
In 201 ...
(now part of
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...
). in December 2012. InstallFree specializes in
Application Virtualization
Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is sti ...
and delivery, based on their proprietary
application virtualization
Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is sti ...
technology that works on a variety of
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
platforms such as
Windows XP
Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...
,
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
,
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
,
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT ...
,
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...
,
Terminal Server
A terminal server connects devices with a serial port to a local area network (LAN). Products marketed as terminal servers can be very simple devices that do not offer any security functionality, such as data encryption and user authentication. ...
and
Citrix XenApp.
History
InstallFree was founded in early 2006 by Yori Gabay (now CEO) and Netzer Shlomai (now CTO), both former employees of Gteko Ltd, an automated support company acquired by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
in November 2006 for $120 million.
InstallFree launched its first product, Bridge Suite version 1.0, in April 2008, and issued its second release in September 2008 shortly after securing $8.5 million in financing led by Ignition Partners and Trilogy Equity Partners.
In December 2012,
WatchDox
WatchDox LTD (originally called Confidela) is a secure collaboration company which was founded by Noam Livnat and Moti Rafalin in 2008. WatchDox developed the first end-to-end DRM (Digital Rights Management) File Sync and Share platform.
In 201 ...
(owned by BlackBerry) acquired InstallFree.
Products
InstallFree Bridge is a clientless and serverless platform that allows the deployment of streaming or fully downloaded virtual applications over a variety of Windows-based platforms. It utilizes a virtual management console at the datacenter and a virtual agent at the end-point. The virtual agent, which runs on end-points without any installation process, assimilates at runtime InstallFree Virtual (IFV) Applications into their host environment's shell and binds them with other virtual and non-virtual applications, without using registry redirects and similar intrusive methods. InstallFree Bridge can be used from within a Domain as well as un-managed non-domain computers, and works agnostically with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Terminal Server and Citrix XenApp without re-packaging or configuring the application for each system.
InstallFree MiniBridge produces light weight executables, that upon activation bootstrap a virtual application by downloading/streaming all the components from a central location. The InstallFree MiniBridge executables can be distributed using existing
Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) utilities such as Microsoft's
System Center Configuration Manager
Microsoft Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) is a systems management software product developed by Microsoft for managing large groups of computers providing remote control, patch management, software distribution, operating system deployment, an ...
and other
MSI based software distribution platforms. InstallFree MiniBridge can be used only from within a
Domain, eliminating piracy concerns associated with competing solutions. It works agonistically with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Terminal Server,
Systancia AppliDis Fusion and Citrix XenApp without re-packaging or configuring the application for each system.
InstallFree Desktop is an entire virtual desktop that operates on top of an existing desktop
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
and works in complete separation from it. It does not require any installed components and does not use
Virtual Machine
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...
-based technology.
See also
*
Application Virtualization
Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is sti ...
*
Portable application creators
*
Desktop Virtualization
*
Service-oriented architecture
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. SOA is a good choice for system integration. By consequence, it is also applied in the field ...
*
Software as a service
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Application Virtualization Solution Overview and Feature Compare matrix
Virtualization software
Software companies of Israel