“Apple is expected to launch Mountain Lion next week,” Ryan Faas reports for Computerworld. “At the same time, the company will be launching Mountain Lion Server. The new edition of Apple’s server platform is revolutionary in a lot of ways, not the least of which is its $19.99 price tag.”
“Mountain Lion Server includes the basic server functionality that you’d expect from a product intended for the small to mid-size business (SMB) market. That means features like file sharing, network printing, client backups, website hosting, VPN, email services, centralized contacts for an organization, and shared calendaring,” Faas reports. “All of that is important and Mountain Lion Server seems destined to make those services easy to set up and manage.”
Fass reports, “In addition to those basic capabilities, however, Mountain Lion Server comes with some pretty incredible functionality for businesses or workgroups of any size or type.”
10 reasons why your business needs Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion Server:
• Profile Manager
• Collaboration and document/project management
• Self-servicing portal
• iPad/iWork integration
• Push notifications
• RADIUS for small business
• Streamlined management
• Next steps advice
• Active Directory integration
• Enterprise features
Tons more in the full article – recommended for SMBs – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
15 awesome IT tools for Mac OS X – June 20, 2012
OS X Mountain Lion available in July via Mac App Store for just $19.99 – June 11, 2012
I skipped Lion Server because of reviews.
Please don’t forget the professional or enterprise markets Apple.
I interact with Lion Server every day. It’s an incomplete P.O.S.! Apple has really dropped the ball in the server space. I know, I know. They didn’t drop it… they threw it away. But still, Lion Server is an unreliable mess.
I used to love OS X Servers. I’m cautiously skeptical about Mountain Lion server. Price ($20) means I’ll try it. But hopefully, its low price doesn’t reflect its value…or the time they spent re-tooling Server.app.
I don’t think I have to keep it a secret any longer that folks inside of Apple were not pleased with Leopard (10.5) Server when it was released. I’m not sure what happened, but after Tiger Server it was as if the family decided to ignore the eldest child and concentrate on the younger kids. Bleh.
For many uses it’s an incredibly inexpensive alternative to the Microsoft junk. But it has developed a clunk factor that’s distracting and/or annoying.
Here’s one reason not to : no print server.
And no, CUPS isn’t enough.
I’ll stick with Snow Leopard Server thanks, until Apple sees sense.
$19.99 for Mountain Lion Server? You can’t save much with Linux anymore, except on the server hardware, itself.
For a small office using Macs, OS X Server is a no brainer, especially for $20!
I’ve been using OS X Server since Tiger for an office with 10 client machines. Each version of the server software gets easier to set up and use. Plus, and this is a huge plus, once it is setup you can practically ignore it until the next version comes out. About all I’ve ever had to do on the server was install updates and change permissions when staff are hired or fired.
Apple, keep up the good work and don’t ever forget about the OS X server market.
Lion Server is terrible; incomplete, unstable, feature-poor. Snow Leopard Server was alright. There still isn’t a good full featured server for the non-admin types. Nothing beats apache. But you have to be diligent in its config.
It is not unstable. I use it on 6 different servers and it preforms wonderfully.
Yes the GUI has slid backwards, beyond that it is fine. Directory services are more stable than they have ever been. DNS, DHCP, Web services work flawlessly. Mail is quite capable. File services are as stable as they have ever been on OS X server.
Feature-Poor? MAYBE you almost have an argument out of the box, but no, no you don’t. What features are missing? Print Server? OK, great time to go paperless, OR use something more appropriate, Apple print servers have sucked for ever anyway. There are so many open source projects, so many commercial products, that you are just plain wrong.
ATTN ‘NON-ADMIN Types’ you shouldn’t be running servers, you don’t know what you are doing and you are creating your own pain. Scared of the blinking cursor? Pick up a few books and get over it..
I wouldn’t buy it……need a server to run it on and Apple stopped providing that hardware.
Mac Pro or Mac Mini can both be servers.
I’ll be swapping out my old server for a Mac Mini running 10.8 Server. I’m impressed.
My MacPro 2 X 2.66 6-Core Xeon with 24GB of DDR3 is more than enough server for most. (It is orders of magnitude quieter and FASTER than the xserveS <– (with an S). it replaced.
It has a raid card, and an attached raid array serving up terabytes of data.
Lemme Guess, you want a redundant power supply? Whine some more..
One can hope that the many bugs that were in Lion Server were corrected before this release. Lion Server was a disaster that had some of the same benefits listed above. The instability and contant crashes with Lion were a weekly issue. Correcting the server was almost impossible as there was no documentation to reference. After 6 server rebuilds in less than 3 months, I had to revert back to Snow Leopard Server. An IT Manager to administer the server ma¥ be a requirement in order to keep it running. Let’s hope Mountain Lion Server is a much better product.
Still running 10.6.8, 10.7 is garbage
Well, ‘garbage’ is a bit extreme. But here we are 5 updates into Lion and its fundamental problem, the cruddy Finder app, hasn’t been touched. Instead, all the effort has gone into the 10.8 Mountain Lion Finder, which isn’t really fair IMHO. Then again, the update is going to be dirt cheap.
Still running Server 10.5.8 on Xserve in a corp enviro with several hundred users. Major nightmares with e-mail currently; its going to have to be outsourced, and soon.
In the past I tried repeatedly to use the OS X Server 10.6 migration tool various ways with no luck; it always refuses to migrate most of the (many) Users and Groups, and appears to have been written by amateurs who took no unusual circumstances into account.
Also my past experience is that Apple provides virtually no competent tech support for this very sophisticated and potentially extremely complex product; they just aren’t interested, and you’re thrown to the wolves. Abandoning the Xserve really put the proverbial writing on the wall, and I’m surprised that they are even bothering to come out with a 10.8 Server version. But for $20 I’d be curious to try it just to see if it can migrate anything; however I don’t think it supports migration from 10.5 so no dice.