Dumping Google for Mac based small business

I know of several businesses with Macs in the office, I've set up a couple. You can always run Windows in a VM if you have any apps that don't have Mac alternatives.

Not sure where you are coming from on getting away from Google apps though. Being on a Mac doesn't really have anything to do with that, as it's all web based if I'm not mistaken.

The clients that I have who run mostly Macs are ten times more a pain in the arse to support. Everything is rigged. If you are purely doing Google Apps, probably ok. If you are doing any local apps, shares, etc, then you will need to learn plenty of work around. Macs just work (@home, kind off, unless they don't)

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Nice list of yesterday's junk.

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Anyone familiar with a good Mac based CRM?

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So, my point is that you aren't being clear as to what you're want because your question presents a false dichotomy. The best I can deduce is that you want one of the following two things:

1. A CRM with thick client pieces that run on Macs. Sounds really cutting edge.

2. A CRM that you can host in-house on a bare-metal server that is running OSX Server. Again.. wow.


You also keep talking about domains and google as if they are dependent on your CRM solution. All 3 of those pieces can move independently of each other, imo. I guess maybe you are also asking what software you can use to build and manage a domain out of your macs. Yet, you didn't specify what about google's directory service you disliked. It's also unclear as to what kind of servers you plan to run this on. I don't know man, you're never going to get a good answer like this.

Just put it all on the cloud.. oh wait. That's yesterday's junk.

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You also keep talking about domains and google as if they are dependent on your CRM solution. All 3 of those pieces can move independently of each other, imo.

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I'm actually talking about changing all three.

I state how I am set up now.

I state that I don't want to be tied to Google any longer.

I state that I am going to have iphones and Macs only in the new system.

I am asking what others are using in their office and how they like them.

If you're an IT guy, it's the perfect opportunity to say "we're all Mac and we do XYZ and love it!" Whether that is in house or cloud or whatever.

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I am an IT guy and hate any businesses that use Macs. They are stupid and should only be used for your house. They don't play nice with anything, they cant run any industry specialized software without a VM, they cause the most problems with routine, day to day network issues, printer queue problems, file share samba issues, random pinwheel problems with no explanations and people only get them because they want to be cool and less productive.

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Sounds like you suck at IT. We have numerous clients from small businesses meaning 3-4 employees to enterprise level. We have numerous Mac clients on windows servers with mixes of windows macs and Linux machines. We have none of the issues you are talking about with day to day network issues or file sharing. Sure you may have to run VMware for specialized software, but it's normally not a big deal at all.

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Anyone familiar with a good Mac based CRM?

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Virtually everything you're looking at is moving to being cloud-based. You shouldn't worry about what type of client you or your employees use to access the information, now or in the future. Mac, phone, droid, pc, who cares...

I currently use Zoho for CRM and (light) Project Management. They also have mail, calendars, docs, bug trackers, etc. There are plenty of others out there as well.

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I state that I don't want to be tied to Google any longer.

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Sorry for the slow replies, spent all day yesterday traveling. I'm not saying you should stay with them, but what part of Google apps isn't working for you? That would help us to recommend something.

Anything web/cloud based is platform independent. Do you have local file shares to worry about? Existing domain/server? If you just have a basic LAN, and everything's in the cloud, just buy whatever machines you want, it doesn't matter.