Treitel's The Law of Contract describes a contract as an "agreement giving rise to obligations which are enforced or recognised by law." In addition to that, Anson in Principles of the Law of Contract defines a contract as a legally binding agreement made between two or more persons by which rights are acquired by one or more to acts or forbearances on the part of of the other or others. In order for a simple contract to arise therefore there must be:
An intention by the parties:
to form a legally binding agreement; and
some consideration must have passed from one party to the other.
In the same way that there are various types of contracts for instance joint venture agreements and partnership agreements, there are also four main types of I.T Contracts namely:
Software License Agreements and Software Ownership Agreements-These transfer intellectual property rights from the vendor to the customer. They include end user licenses, enterprise licenses, distribution contracts, assignments and work for hire agreements.
IT Professional Services Agreements-These call on the vendor's staff to help the customer. Some of the professional services include system integration, tech support, website development , software maintenance and technology consulting.
Cloud Services Agreements- These call on the vendor to host a cloud computing system and to give the customer remote access usually via the internet. They are sometimes called cloud Hosting Agreements or Cloud Computing Services Agreements.
Combination Agreements- These call on the vendor to provide some combination of software, professional services and cloud services. These contracts work like two or more contracts in one.