This may sound kind of stupid but we're completely new to the MSI world. Our clients have been asking for the ability to administratively push updates out to their various staff PCs instead of having to manually update each one at the console. Is a setup.msi from a Basic MSI project the only way to achieve this?
The question is whether you need to distribute updates to internal customers or external customers. If you need to distribute to external customers, you will need flexnet connect. It is an additional service you can purchase. You may want to contact your sales rep.
The installer is manually downloaded from our support site by our clients when it becomes available and when they're ready to deploy. After downloading the update, our clients want to be able to push the software out to their staff PC's without physically attending each machine (most have been asking for MSI). Given that the administrators would not be sitting down at each PC, as they currently have to, is a setup.msi (Basic MSI) the only way to achieve this goal or can a setup.exe (Basic MSI or InstallScript MSI) be used, as well? Almost none of our clients have any 3rd party software to do this sort of thing which is why they've been asking for an MSI installer.
FLEXnet is not a good option for us because our PC software needs to remain in sync with the server-side software. If they get out of sync our software stops functioning correctly.
Pushing MSIs out to client machines really isn't a function of the installer. It can be done with MSIs (but not setup.exe files) using Active Directory Group Policy, and can be done with either type of file using a technology such as SMS.
