Mountain Lion Server is the business-oriented server version of Apple Computer’s Mac OS X Mountain Lion (v10.8) operating system. Like its predecessors, Snow Leopard Server and Lion Server, Mountain Lion Server represents Apple’s successor and replacement for the company’s older enterprise-grade server product, Xserve, which Apple discontinued in 2011.
Unlike Xserve, Mac OS X Mountain Lion Server and its simplified deployment and administration capabilities are focused more toward small businesses than enterprises. To that end, Mountain Lion Server enables collaboration and file sharing among users while also facilitating backups across multiple computers, remote administration, website and mail server hosting and more.
Mac OS X Mountain Lion Server launched on July 25, 2012 through the Mac App Store in the form of a $19.99 OS X Server App that upgrades the standard Mac OS X Mountain Lion operating system.