At the end of the recent WebRTC Conference and Expo I talked about the expanding WebRTC ecosystem and how we are seeing rapid growth in the community and who is paying attention to and learning about WebRTC.
In his keynote at the event, Jan Linden of Google (also the CEO of Global IP Solutions that Google bought as the basis of the Google Media Engine and the WebRTC media engine) commented on the size of the crowd, saying that two years ago everybody interested in WebRTC would fit into a small conference room. With the WebRTC Conference and Expo essentially doubling from November 2012 to June of 2013, WebRTC is obviously gaining traction.
In the closing remarks, I commented that the WebRTC ecosystem and community is growing, as a sphere or onion. It started in 2010 with a small group at Google, expanded in 2011 with a strong group of standards advocates and then in 2012 with early evangelists and companies. As can be seen in the accompanying diagram, the ecosystem in South San Francisco reflected that point in time in the WebRTC evolution.
In Atlanta, we saw an upswing in service provider attendance and interest as well as explosive growth in applications and services that were delivering key values with WebRTC as an adjunct. The key is that as the ecosystem grows out, the size grows exponentially, just like a sphere. So each new stage of inclusion in the ecosystem generates a huge growth in the number of interested individuals and organizations. The diagram shows the concept of these layers and how different groups are joining the ecosystem. The key point here is that as each group comes into the ecosystem, they go through the same steps; understanding WebRTC and its ramifications, defining how WebRTC impacts and is used in their environments, developing a WebRTC strategy, analyzing paths and partners and finally moving forward. For many organizations, this process takes significant time, but as they come into the WebRTC ecosystem, the journey begins.
As we look forward, the next expansion will begin to include the enterprise telecom teams and customer service teams of enterprises. To date, these teams have been on the sidelines, but as they begin to do their 2014 planning, WebRTC is becoming a key part of their planning. Understanding how their existing vendors and new entrants can meet their needs and change their business is becoming a new focus. As we look forward to the next WebRTC Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, November 19-21, 2013, with the assistance of a strong Advisory Board, we are defining the content to help this expanding ecosystem to understand, deploy and gain strategic advantage from WebRTC. If you are interested in contributing, please visit the Submit Papers Page to submit a session proposal for the next event.
WebRTC is an exciting transformation of communications. Like all innovations and transformations, it is growing outward in both community participation and impact. With WebRTC we are seeing a technology that is both simple and complex, having a major disruptive impact across a wide variety of industries and organizations. I firmly believe that this community will continue to expand at an exponential rate and being part of the ecosystem is critical to delivering optimal value from the transformation. I look forward to seeing you in Santa Clara, both old and new friends in WebRTC.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
