Best Practice - Leopard Server and a Windows Server/Application

Question

Our family owns an accounting practice in Northern California. We all use MacBook Pros running Leopard as our client machines.
Our customers all use QuickBooks for Windows for their accounting software. We currently host and store our customer's QuickBooks company files on a Windows 2003 SBS Server. Our staff connects to the Windows Server to launch QuickBooks and perform our accounting services. We do not use any of the features of the Windows Server besides the ability to log in with multiple user sessions to launch QuickBooks from both internal and remote office locations.
Since we all use MacBook Pros, we'd like to use Leopard Server and implement mail, calendaring, wikis, etc. My dilemma is figuring out if this is technically possible because we need to continue to log into a Windows PC, Server, etc with multiple staff's sessions to perform our accounting services with QuickBooks for Windows.
Can someone suggest a way we can do this? I'm not very technical since I am an accountant! We're hoping this can be done somehow!
Thanks for any suggestion and assistance!
John

Answer 1

We also have Quickbooks as our legacy Windows app.
Quickbooks files for several companies are stored on our Mac OS X Server, which is accessed by a Windows 2003 Server.
I considered using Parallels or VMware, but the administrative overhead seam excessive. (One installation of Windows is too many). Windows Terminal Services seamed the best fit. Additional client access licenses were required from Microsoft as Windows Server only comes with two administrative RDP licenses.
Our staff and staff from accounting and tax consulting firms connect to Quickbooks on the Windows server via RDP. Internally, we have a couple of diskless thin clients, and iMacs with RDP software installed. Externally, both Windows and Mac OS X clients connect to our 10.5 server IPSec VPN, and then to the Windows server, again via RDP.
Performance is acceptable, as here in Australia we now have ADSL service with 1-2Mbps upstream. On my 23" display (Mac OS X 10.5), situated 1200miles away, a RDP connection at 1280x1024 works seamlessly.
On the Mac Server side, we have recently upgraded to Leopard Server, and thus haven't implmented all the fabulous new features such as calendar sharing and wikis, but we are using network spotlight, and of course the Mail server. Additionally, we have a Fujitsu SnapScan which scans documents that are then automatically OCR'd, and made available by network spotlight. All very cool.
Further work to be undertaken;
- Have the Windows server logins authenticate with our Mac OS X Open Directory. Currently account credentials are duplicated.
- Implement public key cryptography for the VPN, so that we can revoke individual client VPN installations
- Implement two factor authentication (probably CryptoCard)
- Batten down the permissions on the Windows server. The default Quickbooks installation required an unacceptable level of user rights.