Even after the dramatic resurgence of the Mac platform since the late 1990s, most businesses today still use Windows PCs. There is still the prevailing  misconception that, for general business, Windows is the better choice whereas, the Mac is a better choice for home users, or for creative endeavors.  As an Apple Consultant, I see every day that this old myth is wrong.  The Mac is great for business.  In fact, you can run your whole business on a Mac.

There is a growing number of small and medium sized businesses (and even some large ones) that are adopting the Mac as their primary computing platform.  These companies have found that the Mac is just as capable of running their accounting, email and messaging, file sharing, and web services.  There are several great accounting software titles available for the Mac [Macworld Review].  These include Quickbooks from Intuit, and MYOB AccountEdge.  For businesses who are seeking to avoid the high licensing and maintenance costs associated with Microsoft Exchange, my recommendation is Kerio Connect 7 (formerly Kerio Mail Server).    Mac OS X Server’s file sharing capabilities are excellent, even in mixed computing environments.  Since 2003′s release of Mac OS X Server v. 10.3, Mac OS X Server has had the capability of serving as a primary domain controller for Windows PCs.  Mac OS X Server leverages industry standard LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol), and Kerberos services to provide secure authentication services to both Mac and Windows PCs.  Apple calls its implementation of LDAP Open Directory.   Mac and Windows PCs can bind directly to Open Directory, which enables the server to host home directories for end users, and allow each user to access all of the share points and services that he or she has been authorized to access.  Mac OS X Server offers a much simpler interface for which to manage the server, and all of its services.

Beta 3 of Kerio Connect 7 (renamed from Kerio Mail Server) from Kerio Technologies, Inc. now supports CardDav.  Snow Leopard users can now rejoice that fully native contacts synching is on the way.

When Snow Leopard released on August 28th, Kerio Mail Server was not fully compatible with Snow Leopard.  I have always enthusiastically upgraded to the latest version of Mac OS X on the date of the release, so when I found out that KMS was not going to support Snow Leopard, that was a major drawback.  Although email was unaffected, Kerio Mail Server was not compatible with the new version of iCal in Snow Leopard.  Anyone who upgraded to Snow Leopard found out afterward that their Kerio hosted calendar was read only in iCal, and could not be managed in iCal.  Users needed to either modify their calendar from webmail, or use another device such as their iPhone.  Kerio followed up with an update (6.7.2) less than a month later.  The update fixed the compatibility issue with iCal.  With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced CardDav into Address Book.  Along with CardDav, Apple also added an updated native Exchange synching feature in Address Book.  This broke the ability for Address Book to synch with Kerio Mail Server through ‘Exchange’ synching.  Snow Leopard users would need to use the Kerio Sync Connector instead, which is a separate add-on that needs to be installed, and later, manually updated each time that there is a Kerio Mail Server update.  Kerio Sync Connector will synchronize the user’s contacts and  calendars with the Kerio server automatically.  Calendar synching can also be handled through CalDav instead of using the Kerio Sync Connector.   Computer geeks like myself don’t have a problem with updating software on a regular basis.  However, non-savvy users will often put off downloading updates, which over time, will lead to synchronization problems.