Mac IT Guy: Access Exchange from home

25.01.2011

, , and are all outstanding deployment/management systems, and they all work well with AD. But they won't do much to integrate your Macs into Active Directory.

This is where we hit the crux of the problem: No one package will do it all for you. What I would recommend is to deal with this as two separate but related issues:

First, AD integration: For your environment and budget, which of the three AD integration methods--dual-directory, schema modifications, or a third-party solution like Centrify-- will work best? Unfortunately, that's something you'll have to figure out with your AD administrators; any recommendation I make from here is going to be purely a guess. If your AD administrators aren't opposed to using Macs to manage Macs, then dual-directory or schema mods are an option. If they insist on using Windows, and are willing to pay to do so, then Centrify is quite usable.

Second, deployment: Almost any of the products I listed above--Casper, LANRev, or DeployStudio--will do the job. Given the choice right now, I would probably go with Casper, because it's only one with full iOS support, including Over-the-Air (OTA) and Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) enrollment, wireless app distribution, and full Mobile Device Management (MDM) support for iOS devices. Casper's only problem is that it's really a Mac/iOS-only solution. But, again, there is no one uber-product that will do it all.