What Does MSIX Stand for? What Are the Main Features of It?

What Is MSIX

What is MSIX? MSIX is the abbreviation of is MSIX is the new Windows application packaging format that provides a modern packaging experience for all Windows applications. In addition to enabling new modern packaging and deployment capabilities, MSIX application packages preserve the functionality of existing application packages and installation files.

The following are the prerequisites for installing MSIX:

• Windows 10 version 1809 or later
• Participate in the Windows Insider Program
• A valid Microsoft account.
• Administrator rights on the PC

Main Features of MSIX

By unlocking the MSIX application, you will enable features such as MSI, appx, and App-V as well as the following key features:

• Reliability: MSIX offers a more reliable install rate with a 99.96% success rate among millions of installs and guaranteed uninstallation.
• Disk space optimization: With MSIX, there is no file duplication between applications, and Windows manages shared files between applications. Apps are still independent of each other, so updates won’t affect other apps that share files. A complete uninstall is guaranteed even if the platform manages shared files across applications.
• Network Bandwidth Optimization: MSIX reduces the impact on network bandwidth by downloading only 64k blocks. This is done by utilizing the AppxBlockMap file included in the MSIX application package. MSIX is designed for modern systems and the cloud.

Advantages of MSIX

MSIX application packaging can future-proof your application assets with several benefits outlined below:

• Packaging existing Windows applications: Leverage industry-standard tools to create MSIX packages for any old or new Windows application.
• Install MSIX Application Package: Utilize Microsoft App Installer to install or update any MSIX application package available locally or on any content distribution network.
• Apply runtime fixes to packaged applications: The Package Support Framework is an open-source toolkit that enables you to apply fixes to existing desktop applications when you do not have access to the source code, enabling them to run in MSIX containers.
• Use MSIX Anywhere: With the MSIX SDK, MSIX application packages are more flexible and platform-independent. The SDK provides all the APIs needed to validate, validate, and decompress application packages on any platform, including native Windows 10 and non-Windows 10 platforms.

How to Deploy MSIX

How to deploy MSIX? Here are the details.

Intune: Microsoft Intune supports the deployment of MSIX applications to client devices through the client app model. Since MSIX is a standardized installation packaging format, details about the application (application name, description, and publisher) are automatically populated into the application information.

The installation of MSIX applications is highly standardized. When adding new line-of-business applications to Microsoft Intune, you do not need to configure the silent installation parameters required for installation.

SCCM: Since MSIX is a standardized installation packaging format, details about an application (publisher, application name, and version) are automatically retrieved and presented for viewing through the Create Application Wizard in Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. Likewise, the installation strings and detection methods used with MSIX applications are consistent and automatically configured by the Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager Create Application Wizard.

Web (Application Installer): MSIX can be deployed using an IIS server. If you add the ms-appinstaller protocol, it creates a better installation experience.

Microsoft Store for Business: The Microsoft Store for Business is a store designed for business and educational application distribution. You can use the Microsoft Store to find, acquire, distribute, and manage apps for your organization or school.

App Center: App Center enables you to automatically build applications, test them on real devices, and distribute them to beta testers. App Center lets you publish apps more frequently, with better quality, and with greater confidence. With App Center, you can connect your repositories and automatically build your builds in minutes, test on real devices in the cloud, distribute apps to beta testers, and monitor real-world usage with crash and analytics data.