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What Makes Tower 48 Different from Other Escrow Companies?

Tower 48 is a high-tech, secure, inexpensive, simple, and flexible digital escrow service created specifically for the software industry.

Many other escrow companies require mailing a CD or DVD with the files to them to be physically stored in a vault. Often, customers of escrow companies simply pay for a certain amount of space in a physical vault (“You will get one cubic foot of storage in our secret vault inside a mountain”), with limited ability to change what is in escrow. Usually a restriction of changing escrowed assets only a few times a year, such as once per quarter, applies. This means the source code in escrow is almost always hopelessly out of date.

The process of escrowing is usually an expensive hassle, and each extra service, such as updating or releasing the escrowed assets, is associated with hefty additional premium charges. Neither vendor nor client has much control of or information about what exactly is in escrow. One may know that a DVD has been escrowed, but little information about its contents may be known. At best, a list of files on the DVD may be known, but what exactly is in a ZIP file for instance, or whether the file is corrupt, is uncertain.

Tower 48’s escrow solution is a 100% digital process, enabling secure, immediate updates 24/7, at a very low total cost, and no per-access fees. Tower 48 is owned by a group of leading software developers and legal experts, including Markus Egger, the founder and owner of EPS Software Corp and CODE Magazine. Due to these professionals’ long-time work in legal services and the software industry we understand the needs of both software developers and their customers. We have been able to apply this expertise to create the most sophisticated escrow service ever available.

Tower 48 is a state of the art system that allows escrowed assets to be updated anytime and to be interfaced directly with the development environment, such as Visual Studio, making escrowing software a seamless part of the build process. Set it up once, and never worry about it again. It is self-maintaining. Tower 48 is built on modern, high performance, service oriented architecture (SOA), allowing customized access and seamless integration into your own processes and systems. Or, simply use our state of the art HTML and Silverlight based web UI!

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it Cost?

Useful plans start at less than $1/day. Exact cost depends on the number of assets, beneficiaries, and in some cases with large assets, the size of the overall uploaded information. Pre-configured payment packages make it easy to determine what your costs will be in advance and custom pricing structures can be established for special needs for a reasonable setup fee.

How do escrow contracts get created?

Our contract engine can help you with standardized contracts. This makes it easy to create escrow agreements for the most common scenarios. However, those contracts do not cover all possible scenarios. We also offer services to create custom agreements. And of course, if you have your own agreement you would like to use, you can plug that in as well.

Who bears the cost of the escrow service?

Typically, the software vendor establishes and pays for the escrow account while the beneficiaries only to pay a minimal release fee only if the software is released by the vendor or the courts. Tower 48 offers a simple pricing structure for these traditional arrangements as well as models based on the beneficiaries paying the total cost in an opt-in scenario. Custom pricing structures can also be established for special needs for a reasonable setup fee.

What if there is a legal dispute over the escrowed assets?

Tower 48's legal team is there to ensure that both parties are protected and can help guide the process through the legal system if required. Your assets can only be released by you or by an order of the court with proper jurisdiction.

Is my source code safe?

Your files are encrypted and obfuscated during the upload to Tower 48 over a secure connection. Escrowed assets are currently stored in a secure data center and plans have been made to use the Microsoft Azure platform to provide additional secure and redundant storage when that technology is released. Only you or a court order can release assets to beneficiaries.

How many products can I put into escrow?

There is no limit to the number of products that can be escrowed.

How many files can I put into escrow for each product?

There is no limit to the number of files that can be escrowed for each product. Typically, the vendor uses a post-build action or build step to automatically post new release builds into escrow. While the recommended procedure is to compress all of the source code for a build into a single zip file, there is no technical limitation on uploading any number of files.

How can I look up an existing Tower 48 customer to make them a beneficiary for one of my products?

You can look up a beneficiary either by their Tower 48 "T48-" number or by email address.

How do I get my files into escrow?

Once your account is established, you can upload individual files through the Tower 48 web site, as an automated part of your build process or by using the Tower 48 SDK or web services.

I represent a large company with many potential accounts. How can I manage a large set of accounts with Tower 48?

Tower 48 plans to offer enterprise services for large accounts with features such as consolidated billing and account management.

How do I configure "release conditions"?

Release conditions are set up whenever a new beneficiary is added to your account. Each beneficiary can have its own set of release conditions. For example, the release condition for one customer may be that the source code is only released to the customer if the vendor goes out of business , while the release condition for another customer is that the source code is released if the company goes out of business OR fails to support the product. A 3rd release condition might release the source code to a arbitrator in the event of a legal dispute. Release conditions for each beneficiary are in your control.

As a beneficiary, how will I receive assets that are released to me?

When a release condition is triggered, you will receive an email notifying you of your eligibility to download the files in the released product. You can download the files at any time by successfully logging into the Tower 48 web site and looking on the "Receivable Assets" page.

What if Tower 48 goes out of business?

Considering Tower 48 is backed by several other organizations, it is unlikely for this event to happen. Also, if Tower 48 went out of business, we have procedures in place to perform an "orderly shutdown", in which all the depositors and beneficiaries would be notified, and a transfer of the service to another escrow company could take place. This still leaves the possibility of a beneficiery needing software released right within a time when Tower 48 would not be available, or perhaps such an "orderly shutdown" may not be possible for other reason. For this scenario, we have an agreement with a law firm to take over Tower 48's obligations to make sure no depositors or beneficiaries suffer any ill effects.

Will Tower 48 touch my source code?

Theoretically, it would be possible for Tower 48 to view deposited assets, such as source code, just like a bank could theoretically run off with a customer's money, or another escrow company could run off with a deposited DVD. However, this would completely ruin Tower 48's business model and "bring the company down", as this would be a criminal act. We also make sure that most Tower 48 staff does not have access to any escrowed assets in any way, so this theoretic possibility only exists for a few select individuals within the company, who all have an ownership stake in Tower 48.