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July 23, 2014

Broadsoft Makes WebRTC Easy for Clients "Who Have Never Touched WebRTC"


WebRTC, the standard that allows for easy browser-to-browser voice and video communications, is taking the customer support industry by storm. At the recent WebRTC event held in Atlanta, Broadsoft Labs presented a demonstration to attendees meant to underscore the company’s advancements in the standard. Joe Baird, VP of Cloud Video with the company, and Dominik Steiner, a senior developer, offered a glimpse into the company’s enablement tool that helps its customers better leverage WebRTC technology.

“With regards to Broadsoft Labs, we’re building basically an enablement environment for our customers where we introduce new technology to them,” said Baird, who noted that the company is engaging in crowdsourcing with its customers for new ideas. “We’re giving customers new technology like WebRTC, and talking through how we enable Web communication in a more compelling way, as well as simplifying the complex. There are a lot of our customers who are not very familiar with WebRTC technology. One of the things we do inside Broadsoft Labs is we host everything for them .We’ll provide them with our WebRTC gateway that sits in the environment, we provide an open-source client – an open-source SIP stack that they can use – we customize and tailor it, we host it for them on our Web servers. Basically, we’re very focused on delivering an enablement model here.”

Baird presented the company’s concept of “WebRTC in Five Minutes.” This allows a customer to engage with Broadsoft’s environment even though that customer may never have touched WebRTC before. Broadsoft will build them a client, host the client and give the customer gateway services so they can interact with it.

“They can call each other, they can call PSTN [public switched telephone network],” said Barid. “It’s there for them to actually understand and leverage the technology.”

Leveraging the technology involves building a WebRTC client and enhancing it with different features as required, he said. For the purpose of the demonstration, Steiner showed how easy it can be to create a click-to-call button for a Web site. The tools are visual, easy to use and largely work by clicking easy-to-understand options. Customers can choose to build an audio client or an audio/video client. Visual and layout choices are easy to understand and show the user what the final result will look like. Once the tool is created, customers can begin using it immediately, reaping the rewards of allowing their own customers to contact them directly off their Web pages with no fuss and no complications.

Baird calls it “immediate gratification” for a client company that knows little to nothing about WebRTC development.

“But now I’ve got a client,” he said. “It’s connected. I can call a PSTN. I can call another client. The idea is we have got to get our customers to touch and feel this technology.”

As customer demands for easy and multichannel support options continue to accelerate, more and more customer-facing companies will need to do just that.

For more information about the WebRTC Conference & Expo, visit the Web site here.




Edited by Adam Brandt
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