Managing Apple Computers in a Corporate Environment

Today, a fellow co-worker reminded me that in the past people have found it very difficult to manage computers running Mac OS X in a network environment. Even though the OS has been in the market with incremental improvements over the years I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So today I'm undertaking some research to find a way to manage these computers in a corporate environment. I will attempt to find an easy solution for software deployment that will be comparable to managing computers in a Windows environment.