Mac OS X Server provides advanced tools for centralised management of users, groups and computers in your organization.



iCal Server 2

With iCal Server 2, it’s easy to share calendars, schedule meetings and coordinate events within a workgroup, a small business, or a large corporation. iCal Server in Snow Leopard Server now offers push notifications, so you and your colleagues will know immediately when there’s a new invitation or a change to an existing invitation. For colleagues outside your organization who don’t use iCal, iCal Server 2 lets you invite them to meetings over email. They’ll receive a message with an attachment that, when opened, will add the meeting to their calendar, whether they use a Mac or a PC.

In addition, iCal Server 2 includes a new web-based calendar client, allowing users to view their schedule, set up meetings and view the availability of others in their organization. And it lets iPhone users securely access their calendar over the air, accept meeting invitations, see who has accepted or declined invitations and more.

Podcast Producer 2

Podcast Producer 2 is a complete, end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing and distributing high-quality podcasts — ideal for employee training, university lectures, presentations and more. Snow Leopard Server adds two new video capture features: dual-source capture, enabling you to create picture-in-picture podcasts using Apple-designed templates or your own layout; and web capture, which lets you capture video by controlling remote cameras and microphones through any modern web browser on your Mac, PC, or iPhone.

To automate the completion and publishing of podcasts, you can easily create your own workflow with the new Podcast Composer. It offers an intuitive, Automator-style graphical interface that lets you choose introductory, title and exit videos; specify different effects and transitions between videos; add watermarks and overlays to podcast content; and more.

Wiki Server 2

Mac OS X Server makes it easy for groups to collaborate and communicate through their own wiki-powered intranet website. Wiki Server 2 now includes one of the most useful features in Mac OS X: Quick Look. Just click the Quick Look icon next to an uploaded document and you can view it without downloading the file. Quick Look supports all standard file formats, including text, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, QuickTime and PDF. Also new in Snow Leopard Server is QuickSearch, which lets you search and find information in multiple wikis, blogs, mailing lists, calendars and podcasts.

Wiki Server 2 also brings business collaboration to the iPhone. You can securely log in to view confidential wikis and content, view your My Page for tracking content updates and even tag pages, view comments and review document changes — all from your iPhone.

Address Book Server

With the new Address Book Server in Snow Leopard Server, it’s incredibly easy to share contacts across multiple computers. Address Book Server uses a new protocol standard for exchanging contacts in vCard format called CardDAV, which allows it to store contacts outside the LDAP directory. Contact management is handled directly in the Address Book application on Snow Leopard-based systems. Users manage their address books and can allow others on the network to view the information and use it in Mac applications such as Mail, iChat and Address Book.

Address Book Server not only enables searching of personal and group contacts — it also acts as a gateway to search for contacts within your organization’s directory service. Often called a Global Address List, Address Book Server delivers real-time search results from personal and group address books, in addition to contacts stored in LDAP directories.

Mobile Access Server

With the new Mobile Access Server in Snow Leopard Server, you can easily set up and manage secure remote access to your business network. Instead of using VPN, Mobile Access Server provides always-on, always-secure access to firewall-protected services from virtually anywhere in the world. As long as you have Internet access, you can view corporate websites, email, calendars and contacts. It integrates into your organization’s existing directory service for authentication and single sign-on, so it doesn’t require the installation or configuration of client software. Mobile Access Server is designed to work with your iPhone and Mac and supports industry-standard protocols including HTTP/HTTPS, IMAP and SMTP.

More new features

Snow Leopard Server includes dozens more new features, enhancements and improvements. For example, Mail Server now includes push email support and runs on a new engine that scales to handle tens of thousands of users at a time. With the new 64-bit kernel, Snow Leopard Server can fully utilise more physical memory, dramatically increasing the total number of simultaneous system processes, threads and network connections the server can handle. You’ll find more information about new features throughout the Snow Leopard Server website.