Categories
Business webrtc

WebRTC coming of age

WebRTC coming of age

Three years ago we hosted a WebRTC workshop and back then the promise was there to be seen but the reality seemed a long way off. Now we’re teaming up again with ITSPA to take a fresh look at WebRTC – where is it now and what real applications are out there? One of our guest speakers, Rob Pickering, is a big WebRTC advocate and in fact his company, IPCortex, did the UK’s first public demonstration of a call between a web browser and the PSTN using WebRTC at their 10th birthday party, back in 2012. I know, because I was there and witnessed it!

Now I think it’s fair to say that WebRTC has really come of age and Rob will be bringing us up to date.  Standards are now firm and Apple recently announced it will support WebRTC for the first time bringing browser support to the brink of ubiquity. All of this has made it easier to realise the full benefits and mass deployment of WebRTC.  Rob believes this will mean a disruptive impact on the way people communicate, for good.

The sort of stuff we’re going to see are where developers remove any complexity and barriers to smooth communication by embedding audio, visual, chat, file and desktop sharing directly into web pages, browsers and even IoT and mobile platforms without plugins. People can just start communicating from the same space they’re already doing a task. We’re calling this “contextual communication” – a phrase you’re going to hear a lot of in the industry in coming months and years.

Developers are already building applications that solve the challenge of siloed non-unified platforms and distracting “context switches” – the design point being to deliver the internal efficiencies they know that businesses need, while also enriching the experience for external contacts – whether they’re contractors or customers.

Looking at some of the examples around call centre empathy, right through to private healthcare consultation – and of course day to day business communication – I think we’re really only now starting to reimagine the ways in which we can transform and open up communications. WebRTC will be the enabler of the way we communicate in the future and ITSPs especially would do well to get involved, now.

Join Rob Pickering, CEO at IPCortex and others from Genband, Oracle, Sonus Networks, Netaxis at the WebRTC Workshop and find out how ITSPs can use WebRTC to make money, on Thursday 28th September, Central London. If you are in London and want to come along just register here – it’s free – just use the member’s registration.

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.