OpenLDAP

I'm wanting to setup a central list of contacts that the client address books can access. These details would be for none client accounts, and would be just normal address book items, but obviously shareable in our network. I'm assuming that OpenLDAP is the way forward? Has anyone done this, and is there a nice gui that would help me with this? I'd like to also be able to have a copy of the addressbook on the clients as well. Is this all possible? Does anyone have any helpful links / articles. Justyn