The name of the ITEXPO session might have been “Town Hall Meeting: SIP and Unified Communications,” but the buzz during this afternoon’s conference was certainly all about WebRTC. In fact, audience members were so eager to hear from leading company executives about their predictions for this new technology that they mostly pitched questions relating to it.
WebRTC is having notable effects on the corporate world, specifically by breaking down communications walls and opening up vehicles for collaboration.
“From my position and having worked in the service-provider industry, we have to be ready for WebRTC,” Broadvox’s Sales Engineering Manager Jim Mundy said during the meeting. “We have to make sure to not stand in its way or assume it will take too long to spin up.”
First becoming a part of our common tech vernacular last year, WebRTC refers to the process of placing a standard media engine into a browser or other elements of the client devices. An open framework that enables real-time communications (RTC) browser, WebRTC boasts the fundamental components for delivering high-quality communications via the Web.
Image courtesy Shutterstock
According to Microsoft’s Senior Marketing Manager Andrew Cook, WebRTC will play a pivotal role in removing barriers to communication and collaboration, especially when it comes to the contact center space. Specifically, it will move forward the idea that enterprises—of all sizes—can collaborate more easily and be more social in the way in which they approach things.
But Cook, as well as fellow panelist David Byrd, ANPI’s Chief Marketing Officer, cautioned participants against thinking that this avant-garde technology will “change the world.”
“I am not one of those who believes WebRTC is a disruptive technology; I don’t think it changes anything,” Byrd explained, as other panelists nodded in agreement. “The reason why I don’t view it as disruptive is because it’s not doing anything different for us. We say it will improve the way we communicate using a browser and the way we receive information using a browser but notice what is at the end of each phrase… using a browser.”
“What WebRTC needs to garner excitement is applications,” he added. “The only thing I’ve seen that has really changed the world is in all your hands right there—the cell phone.”
Just because the panelists feel that WebRTC might not “change the world,” does not mean they are discounting its obvious benefits. In fact, WebRTC has huge potential for the healthcare space as it can eliminate the need for desk and wall phones, simplify administrative tasks like scheduling patient appointments and enable direct sharing of audio, video, and data in real time.
The Town Hall participants spent some time explaining how technologies like SIP trunking and hosted unified communications, in addition to WebRTC, are revolutionizing the healthcare industry.
Specifically, as the healthcare industry deals with increasing demand to move their records into electronic forms and secure their assets across a variety of devices from tablets to smartphones, healthcare professionals are quickly eyeing collaboration and communications tools including unified communications and SIP trunking.
“We need to look at processes within the healthcare industry that are not efficient and recognize that there are technologies that can assist in improving them,” Byrd explained.
With these technologies being adopted across all the different verticals, the panelists also spent some time explaining why they make sense for businesses of all sizes, not just large enterprises. As explained by Mundy, since small businesses turn to these technologies for different reasons than large enterprises, that means that the provider approach has to be different.
It’s all about delivering the right message and figuring out the specific applications that can help the small- to medium-sized business.
“You have to find out what the need is and what the pain is and fix that,” Mundy explained. “With unified communications, we see jaws drop when the wheels start to turn. We are very interested in how we can help small companies do their business better.”
For more on SIP trunking, UC and hosted applications, click here to get a preview of the upcoming ITEXPO panel discussions.
Edited by
Rory J. Thompson
