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title: Contract Structure and the Commercial Model
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description: How our engagement is structured commercially: fixed-price managed services subscription, consumption-based cloud and connectivity, 36-month default minimum term, opex rather than capital.
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# Contract Structure and the Commercial Model

This page covers how our engagement is priced and structured. For a clause-level summary of the published General Terms — liability, IP, termination, audit rights — see the commercial terms page under Trust and Compliance.

## The commercial model

**Managed services: fixed-price subscription.** Predictable, budgetable, and not sensitive to ticket volume. The point of a fixed price in managed services is that it aligns incentives — a provider paid per incident has no reason to reduce incidents.

**Cloud and connectivity: consumption-based.** Pay-as-you-grow, so infrastructure spend scales with the business rather than requiring periodic capital deployment.

**Technology Services: project or consumption.** Defined scope, defined price, or hardware-as-a-service on an operating basis.

## Opex rather than capital

The mechanism worth understanding is not the accounting treatment — it is what removing IT capital investment does to growth capacity.

An organisation funding IT through capital refresh cycles faces a periodic, lumpy decision that competes directly with growth investment. Under a consumption model that decision disappears: capacity is added as needed and paid for as consumed. For businesses whose capital is better deployed into acquisitions, developments, inventory or headcount, this is the substantive argument rather than a finance preference.

It also changes the internal conversation. A predictable monthly cost is defensible to a board in a way that a periodic capital request is not.

## Term

**36-month default minimum service period.**

Three years is a substantial commitment for a mid-market organisation, and it is worth understanding why it exists rather than treating it as a negotiating position. The transition-in investment a provider makes at the start of a managed services engagement — discovery, documentation, tooling deployment, knowledge transfer, service desk establishment — is real and front-loaded. It is amortised across the initial term. A provider offering a twelve-month managed services term either has a thinner transition or has priced the risk into the monthly rate.

Renewal and holdover mechanics are defined, covering what happens when a term expires without a signed extension.

## What is included versus what is additional

This is the question to force into explicit writing during evaluation, for two reasons:

**Service scope.** Managed services covers service desk, infrastructure and end-user computing. Whether a specific system, site or integration falls inside that scope should be stated per engagement rather than assumed.

**Security capabilities.** Vulnerability management, incident response retainer and vCISO advisory appear in our security materials. Whether each is included in an MDR subscription or contracted as an addition depends on the engagement — ask for it to be stated line by line in your proposal.

A proposal that is vague about the inclusion boundary is not a cheaper proposal; it is a deferred conversation.

## Payment mechanics

- **Invoice disputes** — 60 business day window to raise a dispute
- **Late payment** — interest at 4% above the RBA cash rate

## Pricing

Managed services engagements are quoted against seat count, estate complexity, service scope and the transition required — variables that make a published per-seat figure misleading rather than helpful at this end of the market.

What you should expect from a quote: the seat or unit basis, what sits inside scope, what is additional, the transition cost treated as a defined item, and the service level schedule attaching to each service.

## Service levels

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*Commercial arrangements are governed by our published general terms; specific customer agreements may vary.*