.NET: Trevoli / Photofinale

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Trevoli Employs Thinstall Platform to Distribute Photo Finale® Software

Digital photography has moved to center stage in both commercial applications and now with the general picture-taking public. Trevoli , the "software for digital media" company, through its premier product - Photo Finale ® - is a market leader in the delivery of award-winning digital software so technically advanced that it makes the photo process what it should be - easy. Developed for the consumers taking digital photos and the labs that process them, Photo Finale® provides the tools to express ideas, maximize creativity and protect images - as well as organize them, edit, enhance, create, print, archive and distribute. They have delivered over 200,000 copies of Photo Finale® using Thinstall technology.

The Situation
With the release in 2002 of Photo Finale® 2.0, Trevoli established its software as a professional level application available to consumers as well as dealers and retailers. By the release in 2004 of Photo Finale® 3.0 Retail, and customized commercial versions of 3.0 and Premium 3.0, Trevoli was firmly established as a leader in both arenas. Retail and commercial customers must be able to install quickly, easily and without the need for extensive Help Desk support. Reliability and production quality must exceed the standards of the highest-level competitors. Because Photo Finale® in all its versions is deployed on various computer systems running multiple software applications, the installation must be able to avoid the failure rates common to the standard .NET framework. This is critical to the quality of performance and to control costs involved in resolving any conflict with other applications.



The Challenge:
Trevoli planned to deploy over one million copies of Photo Finale in retail and trial downloads, so it was essential to reduce installation failures and lower bandwidth cost. Trevoli chose to develop Photo Finale using Microsoft's .NET Platform because it permitted rapid development of stable powerful applications. However, the highest quality available .NET deployment tool was required for the following reasons:

·	To achieve the smallest possible .NET installation size giving customers a better experience.

·	Bandwidth costs are significant with a large number of downloads.

·	Running a .NET application entirely from CD is not normally possible.

·

Requiring customers to install the .NET framework as a separate package is not practical. Customers needed a single, unified install process that's fast, easy, and will work regardless of the complexity or configuration of the customer's existing software. This would produce a higher quality perception point of view and reduce support costs.

The Solution:
Engineers at Trevoli recognized the philosophy of installing the full .NET framework was a good one, and needed a great deployment tool to complement it. Trevoli used the Thinstall .NET deployment platform to combine the Photo Finale application along with only the relevant .NET components. The application and .NET framework could then be delivered and run from one .exe file.

The Results:

Reduction of install size by 50%
Thinstall's optimized integration of .NET allowed the download size to be reduced from 36MB to 18MB . This in turn successfully reduced bandwidth required for download and resulted in a large savings for Trevoli. Thinstall technology allowed Trevoli to run a .NET application entirely from CD, a factor that proved useful for demo version of its software.

Reduction of install time by more than 10 times
Using Thinstall as a deployment tool reduced total install time to less than 20 seconds, compared to an install time of nearly 4 minutes with the previous deployment package.

Elimination of installation failures
Because of other previously installed applications, spy ware and viruses, Trevoli experienced installation failure rates as high as 5% . This created a significant support cost for Trevoli along with a less than optimal first impression for the customer. With Thinstall, Trevoli was able to eliminate 90% of the installation process and reduce installation failure to nearly zero . This resulted in a perception of value and quality from Trevoli's customers; while dramatically reducing installation support costs.

Trevoli has delivered over two hundred thousand copies of its product to individuals and companies using Thinstall technology to deploy the application. Offering a problem-free, rapid-install commitment, Photo Finale has been a tremendous success.

"We have found our investment in Thinstall to be repaid many times over because it allows us to deliver higher quality for our customers while reducing support costs. Equally, our customers have reduced their time investment while meeting their standards of quality. We knew incorporating Thinstall technology made sense for Trevoli, but there had to be a good company behind it to support the process and deliver continued improvements over time. We have found Thinstall to be very responsive on both counts." -Lee Whitney, CTO, Trevoli, Inc.

About Trevoli
Trevoli, Ltd., based in Dallas, Texas, is a software development company focusing on creative applications with the highest usability and quality. Its management staff and engineers have worked at some of the most successful software companies in the world, and take pride in bringing their experience to Trevoli to create great products customers. For more information about Photo Finale and Trevoli, visit them on the Internet at: http://www.trevoli.com.

Retail Products:

·

Photo Finale® Premium 3.0 - is the ultimate in digital photo software, packed with ease of use features that allow customers the flexibility to express their ideas in different ways and maximize their creativity, whether they are skilled at digital photography manipulation or just getting stated. It provides many options for printing and protecting images.

·	Photo Finale® qs, a light version of the Premium 3.0 that gives most of the same great features minus a few of the organizing and creating functions. It is available as a FREE download available on the web site.

Commercial Products:
Commercial versions of the Photo Finale® digital software are customized for dealers and retailers to display photo retailer logo, information and web site for customers while providing a rich online ordering system for digital prints, unlimited greeting cards, and photo gifts from award winning home software and web ordering all connected directly back to the photo retailer. Customers can organize, enhance, share and print digital photos .

Hilights

Challenges: · Achieve smallest .NET installation for an optimal customer experience · Decrease download time to reduce bandwidth costs · Conflict free, easy, unified, fast install process Solution: Thinstall for .NET deployment Results: · Reduced install size by 50% · Reduced install time by 10x · Eliminated installation failures