How to Integrate Macs into an Enterprise PC World
Introductory eBook
July 30, 2010
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Need a quick summary of this 7-page eBook? Click on the video link below.
HOW TO INTEGRATE MACS INTO AN ENTERPRISE PC WORLD
It’s about the users
In May of this year, Apple announced that Mac sales were up 39% yearon-year and the market capitalization of Apple surpassed Microsoft for the first
time. In July, Apple announced a 78% increase in quarterly profits. Just a
decade earlier, Michael Dell had suggested that Apple should be wound up and
sold! The commercial and media successes of the iPad, iPhone, iPod/iTunes
and Apple stores have lifted iMac desktop and MacBook laptop consumer sales.
This so-called ‘halo effect’ has raised user demand for Macs (and all things
Apple) in the enterprise.
Macs have long been the preferred tools in academia, advertising,
marketing, video, music production and publishing, as well as web and software
development.
Many consultants and independent professionals use them
because they emphasize productive workflows rather than struggling with
updates, viruses, malware and freezes. Less known is their use to harden
(http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/20/apple-army-hackers-tech-securitycx_ag_1221army.html) IT infrastructures by the US Army and others on the
theory that homogeneous computing environments are inherently more
vulnerable to cyber attack. Would be developers for the iPad and iPhone rapidly
discover that the Mac is the development platform for all Apple devices. Users
especially demand Macs for the creative applications that run best on them, from
Apple’s Final Cut Pro, to Adobe’s Creative Suite, Avid for video and Microsoft for
Office on Macs.
The influential Wall Street Journal writer, Walt Mossberg, surmises, “Macs
have their own advantages. Apple’s hardware is handsome and reliable, and, in
my tests, Macs usually boot faster than Windows machines. Apple often scores
highest on surveys of customer support, and the vast majority of malicious
software, which is overwhelmingly designed to run on Windows, doesn’t affect
Macs. Also, I consider Apple’s built-in software excellent.” Historically Macs
have not played well in enterprise environments with OS 9 and X launching with
almost no provision for connecting to Windows.
Home or small businesses with mixed Macs and PCs
Right out of the box, today’s Apple’s OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard, MacWindows connectivity should meet your integration needs in a home or small
business environment where numbers of concurrent users are low, file sizes and
throughputs are not high and infrastructure is relatively simple. You can run
Microsoft Office and creative applications from Apple, Adobe and Avid locally.
Integration can be as simple as checking boxes on Apple’s System Preferences,
although very close attention needs to be paid to the support sites of specific
application vendors since significant caveats exist around networked
environments.
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HOW TO INTEGRATE MACS INTO AN ENTERPRISE PC WORLD
Microsoft Exchange compatibility is built-in.
Just about any web
application that will run on a standard browser (not using Microsoft’s extensions)
such as Firefox under Windows will run on a Mac.
For Windows only
applications, or heavily customized Office applications, Windows can be run
virtually on Macs via tools from companies such as VMware or Parallels.
This consumer-oriented market is the one catered to by nearly all Mac
publications, books (there are several hundred listed on Amazon.com) and even
by professional services lacking a background in the integration, support, security
and scalability issues of large enterprises, schools and colleges. It is the market
being addressed by the majority of web forums, sites and groups and even
sometimes vendors with generalist UNIX expertise, unaware of issues specific to
enterprise Mac-Windows integration.
The enterprise context
Apple’s Steve Jobs has revived with Apple products, in the modern era,
what was once the dominant computer paradigm. Back in the 1960s and 70s,
IBM provided mainframe hardware, software and services that typically ran
seamlessly together – the so-called end-to-end or vertically integrated model,
with the caveat that everything had to be IBM’s! Behind the scenes in many
large companies such systems continue to run for certain specialized tasks like
crunching a very large number of transactions.
For many years, innovation happened first in the enterprise Data Center,
or “glass house”, with consumer devices being relatively simple.
Today,
innovation occurs more and more in the consumer space from mobile computing,
to running applications over the web, to storing backups online, raising
considerably the bar of user expectations from enterprise IT.
Over the last half-century, costs were driven out of the general enterprise
IT hardware, to software, and then to services stack by breaking them all out via
standardization and commoditization. One of the unintended consequences has
been user dissatisfaction and business impacts due to potentially weak
integration of the various stack elements.
Integration issues such as
performance, reliability, security, in-theory-one-size-fits-all solutions and an
ecosystem of vendors for support can lead to reappearances of costs in terms of
integration projects, help desks, audit and regulatory compliance issues and the
risk of poor company branding if data losses occur. To combat these risks and
provide seamless services to users, enterprise IT staffs have made considerable
investments in:
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Windows infrastructure
Server gold images
Standards
Processes
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HOW TO INTEGRATE MACS INTO AN ENTERPRISE PC WORLD

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Training
Support
Within the enterprise, managers look to fully leverage network volumes,
with their replication, fault tolerance and backups, as well as controlling identity
and access management for user workflows.
Enterprise integration
The key goal for integration of Macs into an enterprise PC world is
managing Macs transparently - just like any other PC, reducing risk and
preserving existing investments in infrastructure, server gold images, processes
and training that typically represent millions of dollars and system-administratoryears of effort. Part of that transparency, simplicity and maintainability lies in
avoiding the cost and disruption of additional Windows server software or OS X
servers and changes to Active Directory schemas.
Typical Mac-Windows enterprise integration requirements include:

Full network volume support for Apple, Adobe, Avid and Microsoft Office
apps, the very reason many enterprises have Macs in the workplace, or
connected remotely.
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Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) for replicated, fault-tolerant access to
geographically dispersed files. This is the standard for many enterprises and
a key to true enterprise integration and scalability.

Management of identity and access management (IAM) via Microsoft Active
Directory (AD) / Group Policy Objects (GPO) or Apple Workgroup Manager
(WGM). Depending on the growth and history of the enterprise, it may make
more sense to manage IAM from the Mac side, or from the PC-side. As an
example, creative workflows in advertizing and marketing might be adversely
affected by ill-considered application of PC-side norms that better meet
accounting and engineering needs.
Apple out-of-the-box offers limited Active Directory integration but for a more
complete, native solution with Mac WGM, it requires an OS X Server and
uses an inelegant approach called the Magic Triangle
(http://images.apple.com/business/solutions/it/docs/Best_Practices_Active_Di
rectory.pdf).
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Tools to facilitate enterprise deployment for volume users since as numbers
of Macs grow, managing keys and rollouts can become onerous
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In certain environments, military grade security provided by Common Access
Cards is required (http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/laws/gc_1217616624097.shtm).
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HOW TO INTEGRATE MACS INTO AN ENTERPRISE PC WORLD
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Best practices and direct support from Mac-Windows specialists
The challenge
The challenge in meeting these enterprise requirements is the perception
that Mac OS X does everything right out of the box at an enterprise level just as
much as it does in a home or small business context. With time wasted, known
bugs and limitations discovered, sites and support groups visited, the false
perception ends in user and management frustration. At worst, this can mean
that Macs are no longer tolerated in a workplace environment, or run as standalone enclaves, cut off from enterprise resources, standards and best practices.
The reality is that there are functionality gaps in Snow Leopard, Leopard and
prior versions of OS X as well as for third parties who rely knowingly, or
unknowingly on it.
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HOW TO INTEGRATE MACS INTO AN ENTERPRISE PC WORLD
The solution
The solution for transparent, simple and intuitive Mac-Windows integration
is to run Thursby Software that provides a fully supported, one-stop solution with
direct access to Mac-Windows integration specialists. Thursby has over 50,000
Mac-Windows clients. Haven’t heard of us? Perhaps that is because, as our
CTO says, “If you don’t even have to think about our software then it’s doing its
job!”

Our foundation software, DAVE (http://www.thursby.com/products/dave.html),
is a client-based product supporting Microsoft DFS and offering true network
volume support with none of the lost updates and corruption that can affect
networked workflows with tools such as Adobe Creative Suite and Apple’s
Final Cut Pro.

Building on DAVE technology, client-based ADmitMac
(http://www.thursby.com/products/admitmac.html) turns a Mac into a true
Active Directory client, offering identity and access management from either
the PC or the Mac side of the house and includes deployment tools for
volume users.

For those requiring military grade security, client-based ADmitMac PKI
(http://thursby.com/products/pki.html) builds on ADmitMac technology to
handle even the latest generation Government CAC and PIV cards.
© 2010 Thursby Software
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HOW TO INTEGRATE MACS INTO AN ENTERPRISE PC WORLD
Versions
One of the challenges of Macs in the Enterprise is that older machines
may only be able to run older versions of OS X and newer machines, newer
versions. Many organizations standardize on a particular OS X version and
‘gold image’ that has been thoroughly tested and meets their needs. Apple
corporate is not known for sharing roadmap information and release dates,
making waiting on a feature or bug fix in the ‘next release or future releases’ an
uncertain gamble. Thursby stands behind its products with support and potential
fixes in the current and previous OS X versions.
Next steps
Don’t just take our word for it, download a free, full function evaluation
copy and try it for yourself, with direct access to support from Mac-Windows
specialists at Thursby free evaluations (http://www.thursby.com/evaluations/).
About Thursby Software Systems, Inc.
Rather than simply participating in the Mac-Windows connectivity
marketplace, Thursby created it, releasing a series of connectivity products
ahead of other industry players and Apple itself.
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1st SMB/CIFS implementation on the Mac - 1996
1st Active Directory (AD) implementation on the Mac - 2003
1st Complete Government PKI implementation on the Mac - 2006
Thursby today is the leader in commercial grade Mac-Windows
connectivity with over 50,000 Mac-Windows clients and over a million software
licenses sold since our founding in 1986. Worldwide clients range from creative
artists, movie production and publishing, to the US government, education,
healthcare and energy, to the Fortune 500. You can find out more at
thursby.com
Notes
The company names used in this eBook are for identification purposes
only. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
© 2010 Thursby Software
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