What to use in place of Jet 4.0?

Jet 4.0 is now in a deprecated state so we intend to redevelop our applications (which currently access Access via DAO) to use something more "future proof". We do NOT want to use SQL Server because our applications use databases that our clients create, view & modify using MS Access. An obvious answer is ADO, but which provider do we use with ADO?
The MS ACE.OLEDB.12 download states that it is "not intended to be used by a system service or server-side program where the code will run under a system account, or will deal with multiple users identities concurrently, or is highly reentrant and expects stateless behavior. Examples would include a program that is run from task scheduler when no user is logged in". That is precisely the scenario under which our applications run - as a service doing background data gathering with no user necessarily logged in. Everything I read from MS seems to want to drive us towards SQL Server.
Suggestions pleas?

2 answers

ODBC.

I'd go with ACE.OLEDB anyway.

MS really want people to buy MSSQL licenses.

I'd be more careful if several users / processes should access the data at the same time though. If only one service and not too much data / load then you'd sure be fine with ACE.OLEDB.

Let us know how you're progressing! :)