Although its Windows accounting software is later to market than its competitors, State of the Art Software Inc said yesterday it will champion its rivals by allowing customers to migrate their files from DOS and offer an upgrade path instead of charging users full price for moving to Windows. The Irvine, California company, which sells to medium-sized businesses under 1,000 employees, shipped its new product MAS 90 for Windows two weeks ago and says it won’t follow the model of Great Plains Software Inc and Solomon Software, which are charging customers for an entirely new Windows product. Instead it will charge existing customers the difference in price between their existing MAS 90 DOS software and the new Windows product. State of the Art says it didn’t ship a Windows product as early as its competitors because it was waiting to license technology that would allow it to keep the same DOS back end and allow file compatibility for its 40,000 current MAS 90 users. The product is not a full Windows version yet and still has some DOS modules; the firm will add more Windows modules in the coming months. MAS 90 for Windows supports both Windows 95 and 3.1 and includes Crystal Reports tools. Although MAS 90 is the cash cow, the company predicts most of its future growth will be from its Acuity Financials 32-bit client/server product for Microsoft SQL and Windows NT servers. Acuity will launch as a full application at the end of the year, putting it neck and neck with a similar launch by Soloman.
