contract

An agreement with specific terms and conditions, made between two or more entities (such as your enterprise and an external contractor). The contract includes a promise to do something in return for a valuable benefit known as consideration. Contracts are enforceable at law.

For software asset management, the two most common contracts are volume purchasing agreements and maintenance agreements. For example, in a maintenance agreement, the publisher may promise channels of support and regular software updates, in return for a consideration of an annual fee.

Software licenses are also a form of contract, wherein the publisher grants the right to use their protected intellectual property (the software) in consideration of your payment of the license fee. Software license agreements typically also have a number of other terms and conditions that must be met. Although these are types of contracts, they are treated separately from other contracts in software asset management because they are the central object around which everything else revolves, and they have many specialized properties.