[Hidden-tech] Maintenance/Support agreements

[Will Loving]

I am looking to implement a maintenance and support agreement for uses of
one of my software solutions. We will be consulting with a lawyer, but I¹m
trying to get as much info and think through the process as much as possible
before sitting down to draw up an agreement. I¹m interested in hearing
people¹s experience with setting up this kind of annual agreement. And, if
someone is willing to share, I¹d love to see a sample contract/agreement of
this type to help as a starting point for writing our own.

In some preliminary discussions we¹ve established the following parameters:

1. Contracts are annual and cover all product updates released during that
time 
2. The contract covers technical support but not training
3. The contract does not cover customizations which are billed at an hourly
rate 
4. If a contract lapses and the user wants to restart some time later, they
must pay for the intervening time between the lapse and restart.
5. Industry standard for annual cost on such agreements is 15-20% of product
purchase price

Some questions I am contemplating are:

1. Agreement/Contract? Does a maintenance agreement need to be a signed
document? Seems like agreements like AppleCare etc are mostly ³click-wrap²
where opening the package or your physical acceptance of your receipt is
sufficient without requiring a signature.
2. New Purchase: When someone purchases a product, how long might they be
covered before needing the annual agreement? Asking around, it seems like
the common answers are 30, 60 or 90 days...
3. Technical Support: I know the difference in my mind between technical
support and training but I think we need to develop a written definition. I
consider technical support to involve a question about what appears to be
improper functioning of the product (a bug) or a single question about how
the product works that is confusing to the user or is not explicitly covered
in the documentation. When the user starts asking a series of basic ³how to²
questions, I may answer a second one if it¹s brief before re-directing them
to documentation or training.

Thanks,

Will

-- 

William M. Loving
Dedication Technologies, Inc.
7 Coach Lane
Amherst, MA 01002-3304   USA
will at dedicationtechnologies.com
Tel: +1 413 253-7223   (GMT ­5)
Fax: +1 206 202-0476

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