At risk of upsetting the unified communications (UC) community, a lot of what they've invested time and energy in over the past decade is about two to three years from the scrap heap. UC was supposed to improve business productivity, increase sales, brighten teeth and freshen breath. (OK, maybe not the last two). WebRTC is UC in its purest form and it is going to retire a lot of awkward, semi-compatible solutions with standards and HTML5.
Large enterprises have pulled out their hair over the years at UC incompatibilities between vendor A and vendor B, due in part because no business wants to be held hostage by a single vendor. UC vendors finally had to get together to agree upon and implement standards, adding more years to the process of seamlessness.
To go beyond the typical out-of-the-box vanilla "here it is" UC applications hasn't been cheap. Building customized solutions for vertical markets and internal use, often based upon proprietary APIs, took dedicated manpower and/or consultant time. Ironically, SMBs got the most out of UC because they weren't sold a bunch of high hopes and didn't have to spend a ton of cash for software and customization.
Enter WebRTC to upset the status quo. Voice and video are integrated in the browser and can be easily and simply incorporated into a Web page via HTML. Building applications becomes the job for Web designers who can focus on user interface and ease of use, rather than wrestling with customized APIs. Implementing click-to-call and video chat becomes as easy as cut-and-paste.
Voice and video end up being easy to add to just about anything, with applications benefiting from higher quality as well. The Opus audio codec incorporated into WebRTC can support anything from low-bit-rate narrowband speech to near full-sound stereo music, putting the onus of delivery on the quality of hardware at the end point rather than having to be a compromise of the best codec supported in a proprietary tool kit which might support G.722 HD voice.
Is WebRTC's voice and video integration enough for most businesses? Adding IM and presence via log-in isn't that difficult, as demonstrated by Google+ and Google Hangouts. Mobile support becomes available either through firing up Chrome or quickly building a customized app with the appropriate hooks.
Some service providers and software companies have already read the tea leaves and are trying to embrace parts and pieces of WebRTC as quickly as they can, typically by announcing support for Opus and/or VP8 WebRTC codecs. This buys transition times via compatibility with WebRTC processes, but does little to remedy the ease of use WebRTC delivers for programmers and end-users by putting everything into the browser.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
