For example, WebRTC played a significant, if not dominant, role in three of the five keynote presentations: Cisco’s Spark, all of Google’s products, and Avaya’s new Zang solution. Although the other two presentations did not go into detail about WebRTC, vendor representatives – Oracle and Microsoft – were involved in weBRTC-related work.
Take a look beneath the surface of the emerging web and mobile applications that integrate real-time communication capabilities, and you’ll see a lot of them using WebRTC. In the longer term, although WebRTC is a technology that empowers other products, the big shift is those emerging networking paradigms for communication, where we don’t have a single server managing our inbound and outbound traffic, but rather a separate environment managing each time. When I do a Google search, traffic flows directly from my device to the site of my choice without passing through the intermediate node. This web model will enable communication to be integrated into more and more applications (Slack, Salesforce.com, etc.).
It’s clear that WebRTC is the foundation of innovation in today’s communications marketplace-and for good reason. By using WebRTC, companies can implement a wider range of capabilities and cutting-edge media engine technology will benefit from the open operation of Chrome and Firefox browsers.
These protocols and apis are well-defined standards and contain the ability to use core elements such as signaling in the best way to adapt to a particular communication environment. This combination makes development dramatically easier, and the company can provide users with the same or better experience. The fact that WebRTC is based on an open standard is made even better by making the technology open source. This kind of open innovation will lead to more progress.
Cisco and Microsoft, for example, both offer web client versions of their applications without having to download anything else to join a meeting. Cisco now uses WebRTC in Spark applications, and even enables users to create a free Spark account so that they can fully interact with paying customers through WebRTC. And Microsoft has made it clear that it will use ORTC when it can.
Based on these factors, I believe that WebRTC and the Real-time Web have realized a true implementation model of transformational technologies and methods and are rapidly changing the world of communication. As the futurist Ray Amara famously put it, “We tend to overestimate the short-term effects of technology and underestimate the long-term effects.” Just ask blackberry about the impact the App Store has had on blackberry device adoption.
WebRTC is changing communication just as the Internet changed information exchange 15 years ago. Remember the days when the concept of a user connecting to a web server was bizarre, or when most organizations routinely blocked access to the Internet? This change in the open Web has transformed the way work is done by making decisions and analysis available with enough information. It is important to understand that WebRTC is being used in a variety of ways, and that this widespread use is leading us to move from the PSTN as a federated large network to a new network-based model, when making investment plans and future thinking for enterprise communications managers.
For enterprises, WebRTC is indeed a double-edged sword. On the one hand, all of the major telecom and connection center vendors have some plans for WebRTC when providing enterprise solutions, ranging from Cisco’s full-on commitment to the more sober attention of other vendors. The end result is a strong expectation among users and customers for seemingly easy communication and cooperation in all aspects that would otherwise be overlooked if not provided. If you provide a closed internal communication system or keep your users on a PSTN network, expect complaints or comments, just like iPhone consumers in the enterprise. Perhaps we should create a new word, BYOC — Bring your Own collaboration.
But that is only part of the challenge. For all companies to have a mobile application or a web presentation, integrating audio, video, data, and screen sharing in an application could be a key element of business success. With the introduction of the real-time Web, consumers and users will expect to be able to use real-time interaction to enhance the functionality of any application and increase its business value. And real-time communication can enhance any application that has users, whether it’s business-to-business, business-to-user, or user-to-user.
For corporate communications teams, this is a great opportunity to increase influence and impact, or to tinker with their traditional services in a threatening way. Clearly, taking a leadership position in real-time interaction is a major career opportunity.
As discussed outside of No Jitter, the barriers between browsers are gradually being broken down and the WebRTC adoption cycle will accelerate in 2016. This is not a time to underestimate the impact WebRTC can have and the web model for communications.