It's easy—especially for those businesses out there that deal in Unified Communications (UC) tools—to throw up collective hands in despair at the arrival of Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) systems. But there are some ways for UC vendors to outlast the storm and even become part of the steadily growing field. It's going to require some advance preparations and planning, and some willingness to adapt, but the newest reports suggest that it's indeed possible to be ready.
The first, and perhaps the key, point is that WebRTC is now largely inevitable. Granted, support for the system is somewhat minimal right now, but that's likely to change as time goes along. In just the first quarter of 2013, three out of four smartphones shipped—an even 75 percent—had Android for an operating system. If all those devices used Chrome as a Web browser—which, granted, may not be the case as not every version of Android supports Chrome—that means an enormous array of WebRTC-capable devices in play, by some estimates, around 160 million. Throw in Chrome and Firefox for the desktop—the next version of Firefox, set to come out in just a few weeks, will have WebRTC support from the word go—and that's about 57 percent of all desktop browsers, assuming everyone installs the latest version of a Web browser.
Basically, adding in the mobile devices with the desktop users suggests that there will be 640 million end-user devices with WebRTC support by the end of this year. Given that some reports already peg the number of WebRTC endpoints at as much as a billion right now—that includes the beta of Firefox 22—the estimates about end-user devices are likely to be accurate.
That's a big slate of big numbers, but what's more compelling is that the potential is big, and the numbers of those actively planning to use WebRTC is big. Newly-released information on UC suggests that around 25 percent of organizations have already adopted a cloud-based UC videoconferencing approach. 38 percent are either actively using, planning for, or just looking into a cloud-based contact center approach. These are encouraging numbers for UC, but given the primary impetus to go to such a method—cost savings—what does that say about likely adoption rates for the largely free and easy to use WebRTC concept?
But what to do about the rise of WebRTC? Suggestions from blogger Tsahi Levent-Levi offer two main points for companies to begin with. First, reestablish the way the company views the world, this time with WebRTC in the center and the current solution offered as being an outlier. Second, start viewing Web functionality as an art form rather than a platform. While anyone can do Web services, doing Web services right is a different matter.
Consider the issues accompanying WebRTC and figure out how to work around those issues. For instance, when one user tried the Palava video conferencing service, it worked sharp and smooth alike. It would adjust image quality to adapt to network stresses, and though at some points the image would get pretty pixelated to keep up, the whole thing reportedly worked well. Offering products to beat those issues can be a big potential area for communications.
While WebRTC is developing, and rapidly, there's still time for UC companies to get in a position where WebRTC isn't working against them, but alongside them. Those companies that can do the the job best are the ones most likely to survive the new paradigm. Other TMCNet videos on an array of topics can be found here.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
