There is a growing amount of excitement surrounding the things WebRTC can do, especially when talking about the different things that could be done with open source projects.
There’s quite a bit of talk about the fact that WebRTC could actually turn browsers into full fledged real-time communication tools, if all of the cards are played just the right way.
With that in mind, there have been plenty of companies working hard to get the Web browser to that level. Apache’s new OpenMeetings is one of those tools looking to turn browsers into full fledged communications tools. OpenMeetings actually does it differently than you might expect, as that particular tool actually uses plug-ins to get the job done.
The OpenMeetings project released version 2.1, the first version of the project to be released since it graduated to a top-level project in December of last year. This particular version of the program has better integration with Asterisk 11 PBX, which is a solution that is required on the backend in order to enable some of the Web conferencing capabilities.
OpenMeetings, along with the advances that WebRTC has been able to make in the last couple of months, is taking two somewhat different approaches to the same basic goal. Whether one is a better approach to the other has yet to be seen, thanks in large part because there isn’t one solution that has stood up and taken control just yet. When one of these two approaches can actually turn a Web browser into a fully functional communication tool, the argument will be solved.
Until that time, it seems to be working well to basically be taking both approaches. These two can work with one another to take the steps forward that much more quickly.
Edited by
Braden Becker
