Byrne Tony Byrne

Follow Tony on Twitter @TonyByrne

And Before You Upgrade, Reread Your Contracts

27-Nov-2002

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Implementation, Marketplace at Large

What you find might surprise you. A fine investigative column in InfoWorld describes one company's futile effort to cancel a software maintenance agreement with L-Soft. An obscure provision striped across two separate documents quietly locked the customer into a longer maintenance agreement than they wanted. L-Soft revealingly pointed out that it fully expected customer lawyers to use a sharp razor to dig out and slice away such offending clauses -- despite the fact that such legal counsel could well cost more than the unwanted maintenance fee. This is an unfair game, because the ISVs usually need to pay the lawyer only once, but each customer counters from scratch. BTW, some of the biggest victims, in our experience, are government agencies...
Check out "Sharpened Clause"

    Now Get the Complete Real Story

    Vendor Evaluations

    Learn the real strengths and weaknesses of major vendors from around the world, in our research stream.