Editing InstallShield (section)

== Development ==
InstallShield was originally developed by The Stirling Group, a company founded in 1987 by Viresh Bhatia and Rick Harold, who had first met when they were computer science students at [[Northwestern University]]. Their first office was a small room in the basement of an old library building in [[Roselle, Illinois]]. They were to market a geographic mapping software program, but it was never released.<ref name="edm1"/>

By 1990, The Stirling Group was selling a package of six products called the SHIELD Series, including InstallShield:<ref name="Mann1"/><ref name="Byte1"/>

{| class="wikitable sortable" 
|+ The Shield Series
! Product
! Description
|-
| DemoShield
| Create [[Technology demonstration|demonstrations]] and tutorials
|-
| InstallShield
| Create [[Installation (computer programs)#Installer|installation programs]]
|-
| UNInstallShield
| Uninstall the specific software created with InstallShield
|-
| TbxShield
| Toolbox [[Graphical widget|controls]]
|-
| DbxShield
| [[Dialog box]]es
|-
| MemShield
| [[Memory management]] library
|-
| LogShield
| Session recording and playback
|}

In 1993, The Stirling Group moved into larger offices in [[Schaumburg, Illinois]] and changed the company's name to Stirling Technologies, Inc. InstallShield became particularly well known after Microsoft endorsed it for use in [[Windows 95]], and by 1997 Stirling Technologies estimated that it was being used in 85 to 90 percent of all software products written for Windows.<ref name="Schmitt1" /><ref name="Schmitt2" /> Since 1996, the company operated under the InstallShield name until [[Macrovision]] acquired the business in 2004 for $76 million in cash plus an additional $20 million based on meeting sales targets.<ref name="Rose1"/>

Limited versions of InstallShield were at various times bundled with popular software development packages such as [[Microsoft Visual Studio#Visual Studio 6.0 (1998)|Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0]], [[Borland Delphi|Borland Delphi 2006]], and [[Borland C++Builder]].{{citation needed|date=November 2019}}

On 1 April 2008, the Macrovision Software Business Unit (including the InstallShield brand) was sold to private equity firm [[Thoma Cressey Bravo]], forming a new company called [[Acresso Software]].<ref name="Flexera1"/>  In October 2009, Acresso Software changed its name to [[Flexera Software]].<ref name="Lai1"/>

In May 2020, Flexera rebranded its software monetization division focused on selling to software publishers as Revenera.<ref name="Revenera1"/>