InstallShield is an accepted standard in reality in the field of software installation, configuration of software package and software upgrade solution. It is a strategic solution for the development of software installation that is specially designed for both traditional and agile development teams, as well as their Windows installation requirements and virtualization installation demands. That includes many automation tools used for the application virtualization and the traditional EXE or MSI format of software productization, installation and packaging processes.

For system administrators or advanced computer users, most often, we need to quickly and efficiently deploy/install the same one or a set of software (especially all kinds of necessary system components, such as: Visual C++ Redistributable Packages, DirectX End-User Runtimes, Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable...) on many computers. This kind of need can be met by a technique called software installation automation (AKA: unattended install or silent install).