Agreements

Use SAM Core on Snow Atlas to gather and store information on agreements related to software and hardware in your IT environment.

Examples of information that can be stored are start and end dates of the agreement, contact information for both the contractor and the agreement owner in your organization, and agreement number and name.

When you gather information about your agreements and their active periods in SAM Core, you get a good overview of the agreements' expiration dates. To keep track of the expiration dates, you can configure and enable alerts to get notified when the agreements are about to expire. You can also send expiration alerts as email notifications. For more information, see Manage notifications.

Master agreements, sub-agreements and subscription agreements

In SAM Core you can manage your master agreements, sub-agreements, and subscription agreements:

• A master agreement is a document that defines the terms and conditions of an agreement between two or more parties, for example, your organization and a contractor. With a master agreement in place, you do not have to cover the standard terms and conditions in additional agreements with the contractor. Instead, you can refer to the master agreement.

• A sub-agreement is an agreement signed within a master agreement.

• A subscription agreement is only valid for a specified period of time. Licenses that are attached to a subscription agreement are only valid during the subscription agreement period. This means that a license attached to a subscription agreement will have its own period overridden by the subscription agreement period.

  EXAMPLE

  If the license period expires after the subscription agreement period, the license will not be considered in compliance calculations when the subscription agreement period has ended.

  In practice, there are two alternatives to manage subscriptions depending on how the expiration is handled by the product use rights:

  • If all of your licenses within an agreement expire when the agreement does, you should create the agreement as a subscription agreement. Then, you do not have to add periods to each license you attach.

  • If you have licenses within your agreement that expire at different times or will expire after your agreement is renewed, you should not create the agreement as a subscription agreement. Instead, add the subscription periods when you add each license purchase.

Agreement name and number

When you register an agreement in SAM Core, you need to specify an agreement name and number. Unique names and numbers make it easier to identify the agreements, especially if you have many different agreements. If the contractor has not provided the agreement with a unique name or number, it is recommended to internally agree on a naming convention. In that way, the agreements are managed in the same way by everyone within your organization.

Agreement types

When you register an agreement in SAM Core, you need to specify the type of the agreement. The pre-defined agreement types you can choose between are shown in the table. If none of the pre-defined types apply, you can create your own custom agreement types and use them for any kind of agreement.

note

Oracle agreements are not described here.

Agreement type	Description
Software agreement	This type is intended for software agreements, only. This is the only agreement type you can attach licenses to.
Maintenance agreement	This type is intended for hardware maintenance agreements, only.
Support agreement	This type is intended for hardware support agreements, only.
Purchase agreement	This type is intended for hardware purchase agreements, only.
Custom agreement	This type is intended for any type of agreement.

Expired agreements

When the agreement expires and becomes obsolete, you have the option to either delete it or archive it in SAM Core:

• When you delete an agreement, it is removed from the system along with any attached sub-agreements and licenses.

• When you archive an agreement, you have the option to also archive any attached sub-agreements and licenses. If you select not to, the attached sub-agreements and licenses are detached from the agreement. A detached license may become incomplete, since the information on agreement number and maintenance period is no longer available.

It is possible to bring back agreements from the archive. When doing so, you have the option to also bring back any previously attached sub-agreements and licenses that were archived together with the agreement. If you archived the agreement but not the attached sub-agreements and licenses, they can be reattached as long as they are not already attached to other agreements.