Organizations that have adopted Macintoshes as their primary platform have long suffered when it comes to enterprise-class data management tools. Low market share, Apple's lack of enterprise focus, and a Mac system admins lack of knowledge of what they were missing have left this niche underserved. Seeing this opportunity, Atempo and BakBone Software ported their backup applications to OSX a couple of years ago and now Atempo's spread Macintosh support across its whole product line.So in addition to conventional server backup through Time Navigator, managers of Mac networks can get continuous backup of desktops and laptops through Live Backup. While the usual PC-equipped corporate drones will save their files on the server when asked, especially if the IT department redirects their My Documents folder to the server via group policies so saving data to the local hard drive is more work than saving to the server, Mac users are a more independent bunch that will save their data locally when they like, making desktop and laptop backup, if anything, more important for the Mac crowd.

But Atempo hasn't stopped at backup extending Mac support to its ADA (Atempo Digital Archive) solutions for files and exchange email. ADA for files can automatically migrate files from primary storage on Xserve's and other AFP servers to the archive while deduping and indexing the data. It also integrates with Apple's Final Cut Server digital access management application so advertising agencies, film studios, and other Mac-happy organizations can use Final Cut Server's workflow functions to move completed works to the ADA archive.

Even better, and as far as I know uniquely, Atempo's developed an Entourage plug-in for its ADAM (Atempo Digital Archive for Messaging) Exchange archiving solution so Mac users can access archived messages through the user interface they're used to just like Outlook users can with any Exchange archiving solution worth it's salt.

If you run a Mac-centric network, you owe it to yourself to take a good, hard look at Atempo's portfolio of data management tools. After all, the French have to get something right every once in a while and it's been a long time since they started making Château Latour.