Over the past few days I have had a few questions re how does a University go about installing Enterprise apps onto Windows 8 machines without having to setup Microsoft LiveIDs on each of the machines,

As your all aware from the Consumer preview, applications are installed via the Microsoft Store, authentication to the store is based upon your Microsoft LiveID. As a consumer you simply click on the store icon and use the Windows 8 Store to get an application onto Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

However if you are an Enterprise looking to get Metro applications onto your employees/students or lab Windows 8 desktops then you will likely want to do it more directly.

Which is where “sideloading” fits in.

Microsoft Technet has detailed documentation on Windows 8 Sideloading to add and remove line-of-business (LOB) Metro style apps

In brief:

• App must be cryptographically signed
• App can only be installed on a computer that trusts the signing certificate
• Group Policy must have the Allow all trusted applications to install setting.
• Computer must be domain joined to run the app (not needed for install)

At which point installing an app is as simple as

add-appxpackage C:\app1.appx

Additionally you can also remove apps via this process

Remove-appxpackage C:\app1.apx

More details on the Windows Store can be found here

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/

And Building Windows 8 blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/