"Kbox has supported Macs for a while," said Lubos Parobek, vice president of product management for Kace. "But we really feel this release fills in the gaps and treats both [Mac and Windows] platforms in an equivalent fashion."

Kace's Kbox is an appliance used by enterprises to deploy software, manage assets, handle security and software patching, provide desktop support, and handle other system management tasks. With the planned changes to be rolled out in the next-generation of Kbox products, Parobek says Kace is offering full-fledged Mac support that "allows the Mac to be an equal citizen in the enterprise."

Specifically, the Kbox systems management and deployment appliances will offer Mac imaging through Kace's K-Imaging technology, which the company says eliminates redundant transfers when capturing, storing, and deploying disk images. The update also offers new software metering support, allowing IT administrators to meter Mac applications just as they would Windows software--a key component of analyzing how software is being used to better manage license fees.

Finally, Kace is also introducing enhanced policy-based configuration management for the Mac, so that admins can enforce desktop settings across a network with the push of a button. A scripting wizard lets admins create settings without having to know a programming language; with the assistance of pull-down menus, they can handle tasks such as setting screen-savers and enabling firewalls.

"We're filling out the feature set so that everything you can do on Windows, you can do on a Mac," Parobek said.