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• Controlling the Distribution of Silverlight Updates in the Enterprise

  I've posted a few times about issues relating to enterprise distribution of Silverlight , and I thought I'd mention one additional topic that came up during a customer tour that I've been on for the last ten days. If you're a systems administrator, one of the aspects of Silverlight that concerns you is probably controlling the distribution of updates. In general, enterprises like to control their desktop and laptop environments to ensure no sudden surprises are caused (for example, by a runtime update that breaks a commonly used application). So some people may wish to dial down the update settings that are optimized for end-users when Silverlight is running in a corporate environment. Silverlight supports enterprise rollout via WSUS and we provide guidance on how to roll it out across an enterprise via other means such as Group Policy (using the EXE-based installer). Silverlight is installed via a normal MSI plus an MSP-based patch which can be chained through a variety of means. Updating Read More... Posted Monday, April 07, 2008 11:02 AM from Tim Sneath | 0 Comments Filed under: silverlight, enterprise

• Making Silverlight Easier for Systems Administrators to Install...

  If you're really astute, you may notice that we released a very minor update to the Silverlight 1.0 plug-in this week. There's no changes to the core itself, apart from a fix to improve logging of Windows Media audio-only streams; as a result, machines won't auto-update unless the site they visit explicitly requests the new version. (The new version is build 1.0.30109.0, incidentally.) The main reason why this release is interesting is that we've made a few changes to the installation process to enable systems administrators to deploy Silverlight into enterprise environments more easily. Starting from today, Silverlight is available as an optional update for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 via the Windows Server Update Services tool (and, inevitably, Microsoft Update , since WSUS relies on Microsoft Update as its source for updates). Many customers have requested help with deploying Silverlight internally, and this change will hopefully be welcomed by enterprises who want to distribute Read More... Posted Tuesday, January 22, 2008 3:09 PM from Tim Sneath | 0 Comments Filed under: silverlight, enterprise

• Deploying Silverlight in the Enterprise

  As more and more Silverlight sites become available, enterprise administrators are starting to ask for guidance on how Silverlight should be deployed in a corporate environment. Obviously, at one level it's as straightforward as executing the installer, but there are typically a whole ton of questions that need answering: What files and registry keys does Silverlight install? Will Silverlight break any existing applications? What are the command-line switches to configure installation? How do I deploy Silverlight through SMS or System Center? How is Silverlight serviced and updated? How do you configure Silverlight settings via Group Policy? Fortunately, one of my colleagues, David Tesar has kindly come to the rescue and written a very comprehensive white paper that answers all these questions plus many more. The Silverlight Enterprise Deployment Guide is available for download now. We gave the white paper a trial run ourselves when Microsoft IT used SMS to deploy Silverlight internally. Read More... Posted Friday, September 28, 2007 7:54 PM from Tim Sneath | 1 Comments Filed under: silverlight, enterprise, whitepaper