The biggest thing in IP communications is WebRTC. Everyone is getting on board and I'm pretty sure there are a lot of companies that are in denial about the technology's impact upon their businesses. Soft client vendors and over-the-top (OTT) services are going to take the biggest kick in the teeth unless they "embrace and extend" to WebRTC in short order.
"We had packed rooms for WebRTC sessions at Enterprise Connect," Plivo’s Vice President of Business Development, Mike Lauricella said, as he and I were walking through Plivo's WebRTC offering a couple of weeks ago.
Mike and I quickly shifted from a conference call on the PSTN to a WebRTC phone call in about a minute and a half, with most of the time taken up by looking up a couple of URLs, some cut-and-paste work, and Mike E-mailing me a "final" product in the form of a URL virtual endpoint he had built on the fly.
While everyone has a soft client, it seems like everyone has a different soft client, complete with the need to regularly update software and web browser plug-ins. It's a hassle unless you are really embedded into an IM client on a daily basis.
To start the "phone call," all I had to do was pull up the latest version of Google Chrome, type in a number, then click on a button to "dial" it. It was rudimentary, but that wasn't the point.
"The UI for the phone you see is pretty basic, but that's what we want," Lauricella said. "We're the platform guys. A great developer can spin this into the greatest phone you've ever seen."
Plivo offers a WebRTC platform for developers to quickly build voice applications, so you can start by building an endpoint, add on a conference bridge solution, drop in IVR, and build a full blown call center solution. Yes, there are a lot of guys that offer platforms like this, with fully exposed functions via APIs, and frankly these are the companies people (well, venture capital firms and Wall Street) should be betting on, while shorting the soft client and OTT plays.
In today's world, service providers use soft clients, but it's a pain. There's the overhead for support, training, installation, software upgrades, maintenance, and the licensing fees.
With WebRTC, the capability is built in the browser, so service providers can simply point customers to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Support is streamlined, especially if enterprises already support one of the browsers.
On the enterprise side, companies can have developers build the web apps they need without having to customize a solution around a soft client or build their own dedicated mobile app. I'm hoping the "We'll build a dedicated app" phase has burnt out, because I'm a wee bit tired of having to load up my mobile phone with a different app every time I go to an industry event. Just give me a URL and be done with it!
For service providers and enterprises, WebRTC provides an open migration path to simple voice applications, be they all IP, or if they have to touch the PSTN at some point. We're talking about flattening support costs, decreasing development time, and increasing the use of voice-enabled applications without expensive software licenses and proprietary toolkits. Expect as much in voice-enabled vertical market applications.
All this openness also has service providers and the traditional IMS crowd working overtime to build bridges between WebRTC and IMS for applications such as RCS. Earlier this week, Huawei introduced its WebRTC to RCS gateway at IMS World in Barcelona. Expect more IP communications companies to roll out WebRTC-RCS embracing solutions in the near future.
I expect RCS to slowly displace OTT services. Carriers are making RCS interoperable among themselves, embedding it on phones, and using WebRTC as the bridge to tie RCS into browser-based communication beyond the mobile client (i.e. on Ye Olde desktop/laptop). It's not going to happen overnight, but it is going to happen.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
