ABSTRACT
The final category of contracts to be reviewed is the service contract. Along with professional services agreements, service contracts can be classified as service-based agreements. As discussed in Chapter 8, the primary difference between a professional services agreement and a service contract is the length of the engagement. Although a professional services agreement is typically written for one-time efforts, such as when the company engages an advisor or a consultant to assist with a specific portion of the project, a service contract is longer term. It consists of either on-going work of the same nature or multiple pieces of work of a similar nature. Although many companies consider service contracts synonymous with on-going support agreements, as shown on Exhibit 9-1, they can used for either development or support engagements.
