Advantages to OS X 10.6 Server in Active Directory environment

We are getting more and more Mac users in our environment so I am starting to think about putting in a Mac server.

My question is this: "What advantages would a Mac server give me in an Active Directory environment?"

Right now I have 6 employees, 5 edit suites and 4 'roaming' laptops in our environment. Now this is certainly easy enough to manage manually but I expect more to be coming since all but one of these was added this year. Currently everything runs through various Window 2008 servers.

My biggest wish would be to control the updates on the Mac, simplify file sharing, and serve up a couple of Mac specific applications that are currently on my mac pro. On file sharing is there any way to 'point' or 'redirect' an smb share through the server to afp so it will automatically show up on the macs? Also if this is possible 'should' I do it.

Also the reason I am talking about 10.6 vs 10.7 is that I installed it on my machine and I am having issues with 'Network accounts are unavailable'. Also I don't like adopting the latest and greatest for servers. On windows I almost always wait until the first service pack is issued before using it.


I am new to the Mac world but learning quickly, I have been a windows network guy for years.

Any insight or advice is appreciated.

 

The main use of this would be curiosity right now.
I am always looking to learn new things and just wanted to know what the advantages are, if any, to having a Mac server connected to an Active directory environment.

Pushing out system updates and afp shares would be nice. Although I don't think I can do afp without Extreme ZI-P since all the data is stored on a Windows machine.