Linux Servers for the masses?
I work with both Linux, Windows and Netware servers. The difference from my view is that the amount of work on setting up a server is more or less the same regardless of OS. The only difference is how fast the service is configured initially.
On some systems you can have a wizard make your server 10% ready in a heartbeat and then put countless ours into tweaking it into what you really want. On Linux you often spend much time doing the initial setup and then maybe 10% for the rest. For the casual deployer Linux seems much harder when its in reality far easier to manage and deploy.
Its fully possible to make a distribution that makes assumptions, ask the user for the missing pieces of information and slaps up an LDAP, Mail, Webmail, FileServer and other services without to much work from the user. The missing link is often to tie the bits and pieces together to make a good default system easily. The services are mostly installed without any integration at all by default.
The thing is not to make the best configuration possible initially but to give users a working system fast and without much work just as they are used to if they come from the Windows world. They are used to put many ours into the system after the installation is done but not to read up on things and know what they do before even beginning.
Various virtual systems that companies like zenoss use to showcase their systems are a good bit on the way but really not an ideal solution.
