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Using Macs In The Work Place
Kelly McNeill writes "It's been said that bringing a Macintosh into a corporate environment dominated by Windows-based PCs is not an easy task. Once you cut through the corporate red tape, then get through ignorant IT staff you still have to connect and gain access to all the services on the network. osViews editorial contributor Kevin Ledgister took on this challenge and passed the test with flying colors."
I am an IT architect who has for the last 10 years simply plugged my Mac into any LAN where I work. TCPDump allows me to sniff what network range is in use, then ping for an unused IP, and away I go. When support staff walk around, just unplug and look innocent. 99% of corporate security is LAX and allows anything. I keep virtual PC for Project and Visio. Afer staff see me, there is a flood of portables that then appear when the users figure out that can use their nice sleek powerful home portable as opposed to rigid old slow corporate junk. And yes, now with OS X, I can connect easier to Windoze servers. With OS 9 I used DAVE.
netatalk? How quaint :)
With Mac OS X, there's no need to go running netatalk; OS X will speak NFS just fine -- or, if you don't want to go that far, there's always FTP and/or SSH. If you're in a mixed environment, OS X's SMB support is good enough that there's little point in running netatalk in addition to SAMBA.
If you want to see stuff run really slick, install CUPS on your UNIX boxes. Watch all your systems, Mac and traditional UNIX, use SLP autodiscovery to self-configure printers.
A big part of allowing Macs to be easy additions to one's IT environment is simply using actual standards, instead of "Microsoft standards." Generally, Mac OS X does an excellent job of supporting standards that have RFCs associated with 'em. For instance, OS X plays great in an LDAP directory environment. If you're using Active Directory, OS X can still be made to work -- but as with any non-Microsoft OS trying to use a proprietary Microsoft "standard," it's going to be awkward.
It's not that Macs are hard to put into an IT environment. It's that a lot of IT environments have been designed using protocols and tools that only work well under Microsoft OSes, because Microsoft designed them that way. If Ford came out with a car that only worked with a special Shell gasoline, you shouldn't blame Mobil for not being able to fill your tank.