The demos are one of the most fun parts of the WebRTC Conference & Expo, because it’s more exciting to see a solution in action than just hearing about it. The second night of demos this week in Santa Clara included presentations from companies including Temasys, Plantronics, TokBox, AudioCodes, Priologic, Zinagaya, Dialogic and more, showcasing their platform and abilities to take WebRTC to the next level. Twelve winners were announced in the keynote luncheon session by Mavenir, and awards include Best in Show, Beyond the Call, Wow Factor, Visionary and Best Conferencing. The awards were selected by a panel of judges and included companies from both nights of demos.
You can check out the live blog from Tuesday’s demos here, and the live blog from the second night of demos here.
The companies only had a few minutes to wow the audience and judges, and we saw a range of applications and solutions. Some companies showed us what it was like to code a WebRTC solution in a matter of minutes and a small number of code, while others showed us use cases of their solution in action on a customer’s website. Others brought the hottest topics in tech to the stage, integrating the capabilities of WebRTC with next-generation technology like Google Glass and wearable devices.
The demo winners for the 2013 Santa Clara WebRTC Conference & Expo are:
“This year’s WebRTC Conference & Expo demos showed how far the industry is moving every six months,” said Phil Edholm, president and founder of PKE Consulting. “We saw new social, customer service and other exciting apps that will deliver real value in 2014. I really look forward to what we will see in Atlanta in June! Congratulations to TokBox for Best in Show and to all the other demo winners, they are all leading the way in transforming communications.”
TokBox – Best in Show
TokBox has been busy this week! From Ian Small’s keynote to its demonstration and new feature announcements, TokBox is definitely making the most of its time in Santa Clara this week. The company makes it easy to put face-to-face video in any website or application. It demoed its OpenTok platform and highlighted its new features, including archiving and dynamic frame rate control. Its whole value proposition is taking something hard -- something that takes about 500 lines of code -- and making it simple -- narrowing it down to 30.
Dialogic – Ready Now
Dialogic demonstrated its PowerMedia XMS software media server, which enhances application delivery by offering scalability, mixing of media-rich communications, seamless transition to virtualization and cloud delivery and integration to WebRTC. It demonstrated a multiparty video conference that offers many different features and elements, like playing a video within the conference, moving around screens based on active speakers, recording and replaying that recording, and captioning different streams.
Plantronics – Visionary
Plantronics was the only company this week to actually showcase the potential of WebRTC and wearable technology, so the award is very appropriate. It takes an already familiar form factor among enterprise workers today – the headset – and makes it smarter.
AddLive – Best WebRTC Tool
AddLive was one of the judges’ award winners Tuesday night and showcased its WebRTC capability from multiple different endpoints: Google Glass, WebRTC browser, non-WebRTC browser, iOS and Android. AddLive’s big selling point is that it’s been working on WebRTC before the term was even coined, so has a lot of focus on the industry and development.
Priologic – Easiest to Apply
Priologic offers two WebRTC solutions: EasyRTC and tawk.com. It demonstrated a one-minute installation with EasyRTC (another very appropriate award). It has a variety of demos for RTC functionality, including audio only, video only, instant messaging, screen sending and receiving and simple audio and video that all have code available.
PubNub – Beyond the Call
The PubNub Real-Time Network works to power real-time communications anywhere, on any device or platform. It announced this week its open source template for developers to embed real-time functionality into apps.
Temasys – Best Conferencing
Temasys emphasized its ability to connect remote locations around the world, demonstrating a video conferencing session with the Arctic Circle. The company had three announcements so far this week, working to integrate WebRTC with a social dating app, the energy sector and e-commerce social networks.
Questionmine – Best Customer Service
Questionmine is a complement to WebRTC services. It offers video branching that can embed survey functionality, links and lead generation forms in a video online. Essentially, it provides a video IVR, helping reduce costs for sales teams, support teams and leverage the power of video in customer service.
OpenClove – Best Social Integration
OpenClove’s focus on WebRTC is the behavioral impact. It showcased an example of online shopping, and how to make it a more social, real-time experience. Users can bring in friends for their opinions on an item (something that almost all women probably understand) by sharing a link and enabling a video session.
Bistri – Wow Factor
Bistri demonstrated multiparty video conferencing on Tuesday evening, and the ability to bring WebRTC to Google Glass. It also announced updates to its Android app this week, including some modifications to the interface, as well as an updated dashboard that works in the timeline style. Though it won't be available in the fullest sense until January of 2014, it is in private beta mode right now.
Bistri’s interface is clean and simple, but I tried signing up for an account and am stuck on the video/audio test. Any insights on how to get past this (yes, I passed all three and am seeing three green check marks), I can be reached at [email protected].
Requestec – Best All Around
Requestec was recognized with a judges’ award on Tuesday night, and is an innovative platform because it brings more to the WebRTC experience than just video or audio conferencing. It used Medtronic as an example website for training capabilities using Flash. The platform enables video communication and also the ability to interact with images or files, and can work on mobile devices. Highlighted industries include education and healthcare (it serves the National Health Services in the United Kingdom), and it also powers the click-to-call button for contact centers.
Weemo – Audience Choice (Tuesday)
Weemo offers real-time video functionality for apps, enabling embedding chat and conferencing into apps. With the click of a button users can activate video conferencing, displaying some high-resolution, quality video
Dialogic – Audience Choice (Wednesday)
The “Ready Now” award winner was also an audience choice award the second night of demos.
Congratulations to all of the winners, and thank you to all who participated! We can’t wait to see how these demonstrations and solutions will improve and change over the next few months as the industry continues to develop. We’ll see some challengers to these awards in June 2014 in Atlanta, Ga.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
