Preferred MAC Products

Extremez-IP offers MAC to Windows compatibility on a new level. Windows Servers offer a very rudimentary system for sharing files to PC's and MAC's called 'Services for Macintosh'. This is a fairly basic solution and has a number of issues associated with it (file truncation, missed files, permissionns issues, corruption and more). Any MAC user in a PC environment can attest to these types of issues. ExtremeZ-IP is essentially a small piece of software that sits on your Windows Server and offers a system to share files over to MAC's as if it was a true MAC server. ALL of the usual MAC specific features are supported and  its often reported as perfoming better than a physical MAC Server. We have used this a number of times and have found it to be as good as a MAC Server in all contexts (but cheaper).

Archive connect is a software tool designed for file archiving specifically in MAC environments. This is a tricky topic in MAC systems as MAC's have no real ability to recognise stub files correctly (these are pointers used in most archiving products that point to files you have archived). Other issues like Quick Look and Cover Flow features of the MAC OS usually automatically trigger a restoration of an archived file. So, in short, on MAC when you browse archived files with finder it is very likely that hundreds (or even thousands) of requests to restore archived files can be triggered causing a huge consumption of resources and thus causing issues with creating new files. Archive Connect solves this issue by utilising a small client package on each MAC that ensures the MAC finder treats stub files as offline files correctly. A great solution for MAC ebvironment with alot of archived information that is required near or online.

Entourage 2008 for MAC is probably one of the most complete Email and collaberation tools available for the MAC. Although it does rely (for the most part on having an Exchange Server). Keeping a copy of your mail on your MAc and on the Server is certainly much better than downloading it all to your MAC as many MAC users do. Entourage offers a pretty complete email solution and supports all of the primary methods of email transport and most importantly can easily provide a way to migrate from any of the less complete solutions (Apple Mail, Qualcomm Eudora, Outlook etc) without any pain. Offline mode allows for use while away from the office and when not connected, great for reviewing existing, sent and draft emails. We have found Entourage to be a reliable and mature solution to a common area of pain in MAC environments.

Snow Leopard Server is a full x64 Server product designed for MAC Environments by the people who know MAC's best. Ideal for those who are predominantly MAC oriented and don't have PC's in their organisation. OSX-Server offers a solid solution for Group collaberation with Wiki2 providing web workspaces. File sharing and security for the data you work with, backups and mail services. Snow Leapord Server is almost 2x faster than the previous OSX-Server versions and offers great improvements for MAC only environments.

Small Business Server 2008 offers the small business a great way to integrate their MAC's and PC's. The Exchange Server email aspect of the product along with single sign on through Active Directory makes centralised control of the businesses electronic assets very easy. Microsoft have improved Services for macintosh alot and it offers an acceptable level of basic performance. We recommend Small business Server with the ExtremeZ-IP software to allow for a fully integrated Windows and MAC environment for companies with up to 50 users (dependant upon requirements).