The WebRTC Conference & Expo is right around the corner, and there was a busy week of news to drive the excitement of the latest developments in WebRTC.
Last week’s Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting reached no consensus on a video codec standard for WebRTC. The discussion was between VP8 and H.264, which are basically split between support from Google and Cisco, respectively. With no decision on a default codec, it means now that the open market is going to be the deciding place and makes session controllers right to build in WebRTC support. By leaving the standard open, some solutions will be closed and only available on specific networks.
There’s been a lot of talk about WebRTC and the lack of support for the technology from heavyweights such as Apple and Microsoft. Arnaud Budkiewicz, CEO and co-founder of video calling firm Bistri, however, is not worried. Just because Apple has not come out publicly does not mean that it is ignoring the technology. If anything, silence means it has something in the works, he explained.
For those that want to understand WebRTC more in depth, Tsahi Levint-Levi, a thought leader in the WebRTC and telecommunications space, released a research report designed to answer some of the top questions about WebRTC, including browser support, networking, API components, the ecosystem, vendor adoption status, business models and what it can and can’t do. Information from the report, “WebRTC for Business People,” will definitely be covered in Levint-Levi’s sessions next week at WebRTC Conference & Expo, including “Business Intro to WebRTC.”
Sansay, a provider of software-based VoIP networks, was originally founded to develop the highest quality and most useful VoIP infrastructure systems for carriers and service providers worldwide. Today, that means enabling WebRTC, and as far as Gartner is concerned, Sansay is succeeding. Information technology research and advisory firm Gartner recently recognized Sansay’s software-enabled session border controllers (SBCs) and WebRTC platform as “visionary” in its latest Magic Quadrant report.
Talky is a WebRTC service built by Richland, Wash.-based open Web software company &yet and is based on the open source SimpleWebRTC toolkit. Talky stands apart from the crowd by offering possibly the simplest way to initiate WebRTC calling. A person only needs to type in the name of a conversation to get a WebRTC session started. Additional participants can be added by sending them the link to a chat room what appears in plain text in a browser’s URL bar.
A new WebRTC-based website hopes to help form new friendships with CreateAMixer, a social network that encourages visitors to attend video “mixers” based on topics created by users. It’s sort of like the online video version of Tinder: When users join a mixer, they can go through a slideshow that has photos of other guests attending. If they see someone they’re interested in, they click on that photo, and if the interest is reciprocated, a video session will initiate.
We caught up with some of the participating companies at next week’s WebRTC Conference & Expo, to cover WebRTC trends, adoption and perspective from thought leaders in the industry. This week they included Quobis, Radisys Corporation, Bistri and Dialogic. Visit www.webrtcexpo.com to learn more about next week’s event – you’re not going to want to miss out!
