M1™ Software Subscription Agreement (SSA)

Receive updates to your M1™ product automatically within days of it being released.

The M1™ Software Subscription Agreement (or SSA for short) is a support product from ASA that automatically delivers new versions of their M1™ product to subscribers within days of a new software release. For the term of the agreement, the SSA ensures that you instantly have access to:

  • Updates & bug fixes
  • Upgrades, enhancements & major new functionality

SSA came about through a steady, increasing stream of requests from our customers for such a service. SSA is being made available coincidental with the release of M1™ v4.

Why should you invest in SSA?

The answers to that question are: convenience and economics. SSA acts like an insurance policy guaranteeing you prompt access to an update or bug fix if you need it. The Software release will show up without you having to recognize it or asked for it. While bug fixes don’t come up often for M1™, when they do, it can be both important and critical to your work. What happens far more often is that new functionality is injected into the product frequently. ASA releases new measurements often. We have had stretches where we've put 3 different measurements in a month and we have brought out major new capabilities 3 or 4 times in a single year. With the cost of major upgrades having averaged around $4,000 each, SSA makes substantial economic sense. This is something to keep in mind with the pace of change increasing rapidly in the M1™ family. An additional economic benefit to the customer is that at most companies, maintenance dollars don't come out of the lab budget, but upgrades do.

What are the details?

SSA is available to any owner of a version 4 (or later) M1™ family product under the following terms1:

  • When you purchase any M1™ family product, you automatically receive a 60-day no-cost subscription under the SSA. 
  • 12 months of SSA comes standard on the purchase of an M1 Reader.
  • On M1 Rental, SSA is included in the price of the rental for as long as it is under rental agreement.
  • New-product purchase - If, purchased simultaneously with the M1™ product, or within the initial 60 day trial period, the user is given a exceptional price for this service. As long as the user continues the subscription, this low rate is available.
  • Mid-life purchase - If purchased after the initial 60 days, or after a 30 day lapse in SSA coverage, the price will be more than double that of a purchase at the time of a new product purchase. After the an initial 1 year period at this higher rate, the price reverts back to the lower rate above.


Clearly, it makes the best financial sense to get on board with SSA at the time you purchase your M1™ product.

"With all of the major enhancements we are working on right now, the ability to get them all for the price of the subscription agreement will represent a significant value to our customers. Any time we have rolled out a new key capability in the past, the upgrade fees have always been larger than what the annual subscription fee will be under this new program. The fact that we are scheduled to introduce several important new capabilities onto the M1 v4 in 2005 makes SSA the best value that we have ever offered." - Mike Williams, President of ASA

SSA for pre-v4 M1 products are no longer available. Pre-v4 M1 products can be upgraded to current major revision (currently v4) at discount pricing.  Upgrade Promotions and Paths are available.

To learn more contact ASA:

+1-413-596-5354
+1-413-596-9686 (fax)
subscription@amherst-systems.com

(1)  Note that the terms are summarized here for your convenience. Subscription is bound by the actual language of the SSA .

M1TM is a trademark of ASA Corp of Amherst, MA.