Enterprise Connect takes place every year to gather technology and communication leaders and startups. CIOs, CEOs, developers, engineers and more gather to discuss the hottest technologies of the day, and this week startups were engaged largely in talk about WebRTC.
Google released the open-source WebRTC project in 2011. Now, several major Web browsers can utilize the technology to natively handle audio/video capture, multiway audio/video calling, and peer-to-peer connections. It effectively handles many of the capabilities that third-party software or telecom industries once took care of, and as such, it seeks to replace the need for small businesses to seek out those capabilities through larger telecom providers. Instead, startups can do it directly within their websites.
Companies that intend to use WebRTC include BC Social, which offers an in-house social networking platform and intends to include a WebRTC-based button in its software that will instantly initiate a video call, and BrowseTel, which manages conference calling software and allows users to complete a call to either IP-connected hardware or a phone on a public network.
Video conference provider Altia seeks to use WebRTC to transmit panoramic video into users’ browsers by transcoding audio and video with the open-source technology. WebRTC carries video and audio for OpenClove, a voice, video and data communications provider, and audio/video conferencing provider Biba now uses that same capability to handle up to eight video calls at once. These companies were all features on the floor in the WebRTC pavilion.
The technology looks impressive and wide-reaching on its front, but there are limitations to what WebRTC, and the companies that use it, can accomplish. The most notable limitation stares in the face of every Internet user: the Web browser itself. Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome browsers lead the pack in WebRTC support, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari are lagging behind in support. Opera Software's browser has reportedly given up entirely by focusing on WebKit in its Opera browser.
This means that BC Social, BrowseTel, Altia, OpenClove, and Biba, among all the other startups relying on in-house telecommunications services, will struggle to reach the users of any browsers not on board with WebRTC. Startups will either have to create Web-based buttons that cater to the demands of each browser, such as similar capabilities that may be offered in WebKit, or miss out on a range of opportunities with present and future customers.
In the meantime, while WebRTC continues its development and browsers either more fully adopt or reject the technology, telecoms may continue to play an important role in business-to-business and business-to-customer relations. For now, at least, they can fill the gap that a lack of browser support is leaving behind. Depending on the changing climate, however, that gap may soon close and the necessity for traditional telecom services may continue to wane.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
