Volume Number: 26
Issue Number: 10
Column Tag: MacTech Showcase

MacTech SHOWCASE: Thursby Software

Leaders in Mac-Windows Integration

Mac sales in the enterprise and college arenas are soaring, so products from Thursby Solutions (http://www.thursby.com) are becoming more relevant than ever as they facilitate Mac-windows connectivity and integration.

According to an August 2010 report by the Needham & Company research firm, Apple's government Mac sales have surged 200% and enterprise sales were up 50% in June. The Global Equities Research firm released a report the same month that notes that 70% of incoming university freshman students are coming with Macs.

The success of Apple's iOS devices and retail stores have helped consumer sales of Macs to grow in leaps and bounds. In turn, those consumers are driving adoption of Macs at the enterprise level in schools, colleges, business and government. Of course, the Mac continues to dominate in its traditional strongholds such as research, creative design, media production, marketing and advertising.

Working Mac to Mac, or in small businesses with a few Macs or PCs, is straightforward and can largely be accomplished with the built-in OS X tools. However, as the number of Macs being managed in the enterprise grows — and especially where Macs need to integrate with large and sophisticated Windows infrastructure running Microsoft Active Directory, SMB and DFS — the number of technical issues also grows, and the limitations of the built-in OS X tools become apparent.

Along with technical issues come the organizational needs to negotiate integration with different groups, policy-making and considerations of support of new and legacy Mac OS X environments, future roadmaps, training, help desks, auditing and compliance. That's where Thursby Software comes in: Its products have been addressing end-to-end Mac-Windows integration for 25 years. The company has over 50,000 Mac-Windows clients and over one million licenses sold. Among Thursby's accomplishments:

•  The first SMB/CIFS implementation on the Mac (1996);

• Defined SMB/CIFS standards on the Mac with Microsoft (2002)

• The first Active Directory implementation on the Mac (2003)

• The first complete government PKI implementation on the Mac (2006)

"Although Mac OS X 10.6 made significant qualitative strides with its native Windows integration capabilities, it's Thursby who sets the bar to measure all others by," says Samuel Litt, ACTC, author of the Mac OS X Administration Basics Exam Cram Study Guide, the Mac OS X Bible Panther, Tiger and Leopard Editions, as well as several articles for Quark's "XRAY" magazine. "ADmitMac and DAVE's broad and comprehensive capabilities, combined with the company's focus on customer support, provide the most eloquent and dependable Macintosh/Windows integration products on the market today, in turn yielding measurable cost savings."

Thursby's products run on Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. They're developed by specialized Mac-Windows engineers averaging 10 or more years of integration experience. Features can be added and bugs corrected without any need to change the particular Mac OS X version being run — a key requirement for enterprise level support — with no requirement to wait an undefined time for a fix to be made in Mac OS X.

DAVE, Thursby's foundation product, delivers commercial grade, two-way Mac file and printer sharing with Windows. It delivers Microsoft SMB/CIFS and printing with Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) for networked creative workflow around Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Pro, Avid and Office that are typically challenged with native Mac OS X. DAVE offers 64-bit, multi-thread and multi-processor support under Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard").

ADmitMac turns a Mac into a true Active Directory client. The one-stop, robust and highly scalable solution is designed to meet the entirety of enterprise Mac-Windows integration needs. It includes DAVE technology and provides identity and access management for Macs from either Windows Active Directory/Group Policy Objects (GPO) or Mac Workgroup Manager (WGM).

ADmitMac offers deployment tools for Volume License Agreement (VLA) users. There's no Windows server software, Mac OS X Servers or schema changes required.

With its engineering background, Thursby offers free trials with free support of all of its products, emphasizing solving enterprise Mac-Windows integration problems rather than claiming to solve them in advertisements.

About the MacTech Showcase

MacTech Showcase is another way for MacTech advertisers to bring awareness of their product or services to our readers that gives more information than normally can be conveyed in a display advertisement. Information contained in this or other showcase articles is provided by the vendor.