No other topic is roaming the news and social media as much as WebRTC these days. But what is WebRTC and what should it mean to you?
Today I would like to give you an overview around this trend and where it came from. In this article, I would like to try out the “For Busy People” article format by consolidating all hot topics into quick facts to add value to you without getting sidetracked. I know you busy people are busy and so you can just skip the parts of the article that you are not interested in.
What does WebRTC stand for?
WebRTC means Web RealTime Communication, so we are talking about ways to communicate without any delay, based on a webbrowser, without the use of software that needs to be installed beforehand.
WebRTC is an open framework for placing realtime communication components on webpages and is controlled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), who are also taking care of other webstandards such as HTML, XML, CSS, and others. WebRTC components could include methods such as VoIP, Instant Messaging (or just “chat”), video conferencing or a combination of these. Personally, I would count WebRTC to the umbrella of Unified Communications, but the actual use of the WebRTC solutions depend on each enterprise.
Where does WebRTC come from?
WebRTC technology was first developed by Global IP Solutions (or GIPS), a company founded around 1999 in Sweden. In 2011 GIPS was acquired by Google and the W3C started to work on a standard for WebRTC. Since then Google and other major players in the webbrowser market, such as Mozilla and Opera, have been showing great support for WebRTC.
How does WebRTC work?
The framework is based on HTML5 and JavaScript but does not utilize SIP or H.323 like other Unified Communication solutions. The signaling and transfer of data works over RTP and with an XMPP extension called “Jingle”. With the newly introduced JavaScript Session Establishment Protocol (JSEP) direct connections can be established without the need for a piece of hardware in the middle. Depending on the deployment audio, video and/or other data can now be exchanged to allow WebRTC to happen in your browser.
And for our firewall traversal specialists: WebRTC can do STUN, ICE, TURN, RTPoverTCP and supports proxies. What else do you wish for?
What does WebRTC mean to me?
Imagine the impact of 1,000,000,000+ endpoints. Not bad! This is the potential amount of endpoints talking to each other and making VoIP calls or even video conferences. Even though Microsoft is strongly pushing Skype for desktop video conferencing, they are also making sure that their Internet Explorer is ready to take on the WebRTC challenge.
But the missing link right now is: Will there be interoperability between WebRTC and other Unified
Communication solutions? I believe the first developers, making both worlds compatible to each other will have an edge.
Examples of WebRTC?
The possibilities are impossible to count. Especially in the age of BYOD, everyone has their smartphone always ready and beyond that, every notebook and desktop PC could participate in WebRTC. Here are some examples I could think of:
- Customer service via video conference (the end of the service hotline?)
- Working together on documents via web (webcollaboration beyond firewalls)
- SmartTVs allow you to do video conferences without infrastructure or service running in the back (if there’s a browser – there’s a way!)
- Not interested in video conferences? Have a video diary! (takes only cloud storage and WebRTC) WebRTC might change the face of Social Media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter completely if implemented (why not quickly talk about it?)
- Instead of displaying phone numbers to your common windowshopper, provide a QRcode or an NFC space, so users can reach directly to you with their smartphone or tablet (we got a camera, a mic, a speaker – so let’s use them!)
Is there a WebRTC presentation?
You are lucky! Google has recently released a webbased presentation with a lot of interesting slides. I have also added a video below, for your to get some more details on WebRTC, Let me know of your thoughts! Web Realtime communication – Google I/O 2013 – by Justin Uberti
