Software and Monitoring Provision for Mac Clients
Check out DeployStudio :- 

http://www.deploystudio.com/Home.html

which is the best image deployment tool.

Monitoring is a little more problematic but I'm a big fan of Caspar if for no other reason than it provides enterprise management for Mac and iOS that runs on enterprise hardware.

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/products/casper-suite/

Apple Remote Desktop is an essential tool and it includes some monitoring tools. http://www.apple.com/support/remotedesktop/ and http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

I've known some Mac admins who have used Puppet but Munki is popular for a reason. https://code.google.com/p/munki/

Go and visit AFP548 for some good tips too. http://www.afp548.com/

We used to all be in love with monolithic images but these days tend to have simple images and use DeployStudio or Munki to roll out custom packages on top.