One Spectator reader called yesterday to ask what I knew about MAS 500 from Best Software. Let's see, Best offers the MAS 90 and MAS 200 products, popular Tier III systems. One might assume that MAS 500 must be a new upgrade of MAS 200. Wrong. Here's the story. MAS 500 is the new name for Best Enterprise Suite. Best Enterprise Suite was acquired by Best when it bought Sage Software, which referred to the package as Sage Enterprise Suite. But Sage originally referred to the package as "Acuity," which is how most people still remember it. So here's the bottom line: MAS 500 is the old Acuity product that Best acquired from Sage. It has nothing in common with MAS 90 or MAS 200, except the similar name. With so many software vendors being acquired, and so many package names being "re-branded," it's becoming very difficult to keep them all straight, even for those of us who evaluate systems for a living.
