WebRTC is hot, and GENBAND has boosted the temperature with its announcement this week of a comprehensive WebRTC gateway.
“WebRTC makes things too easy,” GENBAND President of Global Sales Mark Pugerude said in his May 1, 2013, keynote, meaning that stock web developers can just pick it up and build apps without being SIP experts. Over the past two days, GENBAND executives have emphasized industry and market trends where people seek the low-cost and easiest to use technology, be it Wi-Fi, Ethernet or now WebRTC.
The SPiDR WebRTC gateway is a software solution providing independent media and signaling interworking capabilities, as well as transcoding functions to bridge between over-the-top (OTT) and legacy signing and voice/video media streams. By leveraging WebRTC and HTML5, developers can quickly build applications incorporating voice and video through a web page, eliminating all the overhead and expense of dedicated VoIP clients. Dropping in new services and functionality is as easy as getting the latest APIs and revising the web page.
SPiDR slots in nicely with the rest of GENBAND’s portfolio and “smart core” philosophy. It provides integration between VoIP networks and IMS and the rest of the Internet. Developers get APIs to access “rich” communications services provided by the traditional telecommunications network provider, including voice, video, presence, a shared address book, call history, IM and collaboration.
Complementing SPiDR – at least for now – is GENCom for Web, a browser-based WebRTC soft client to simplify the deployment of communications services. Built using HTML5, GENCom for Web provides a multimedia user experience through the browser without the CAPEX and OPEX costs (i.e. dedicated soft client) needed in the past for VoIP services.
GENBAND joins the growing crowd of traditional telecommunications vendors rolling out WebRTC solutions. Ericsson has demonstrated a WebRTC to RCS gateway, and Huawei announced a WebRTC gateway solution a few weeks ago, so more announcements are sure to come.
From my perspective, WebRTC is the magical Alchemist’s stone for breaking down the Unified Communications (UC) stovepipes and proprietary architectures created over the decades. Since everyone can get voice and video through a browser and telephony functions are easily accessible through API and provided by third-parties, vertical market applications become the domain of HTML5 programmers rather than more specialized developers.
Enterprise and service providers alike are already being tempted by the promise of substantial cost savings by way of “legacying” soft clients and moving to WebRTC. I don’t think anyone fully understands the true impact of this, with the best comparison akin to the arrival of web browser in the 1990s. Mosaic, followed by the polished Netscape Navigator, triggered a tsunami of web development and forced Microsoft to pull its head out of the sand and develop Internet Explorer. A secondary wave of web browsers came in the 2000s, with Apple’s Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome.
WebRTC is only at the very beginning of its lifecycle, but with telecommunications vendors and service providers lining up for it, the world appears ready to make another rapid change.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
