During this year’s WebRTC Conference-in-a-Conference at Enterprise Connect 2015, we’ll answer pressing questions about the state of WebRTC today.
By now you've certainly heard of WebRTC, and depending on what you've read you've either heard that WebRTC is for losers or that WebRTC will reshape the world in a way not seen since a comet struck near the Yucatan peninsula and wiped out the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.
As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. My colleague Brent Kelly, president of KelCor, and I have spent the last few months building a program for the upcoming WebRTC Conference-in-a-Conference at Enterprise Connect 2015 with the aim of answering the following seven questions.
1. What is the state of WebRTC?
During this tutorial, Cisco Fellow and IETF RTCWeb working group co-chair Cullen Jennings will answer the question: "Is WebRTC finally ready for widespread enterprise adoption?" We'll discuss whether or not WebRTC can replace dedicated software clients to enable true, browser-based voice, video, and Web conferencing capabilities without any downloads, as well as how it can support data protection, reliability, and interoperability business requirements.
2. What is the business value of WebRTC?
In this session, Brent and myself will share our individual research into enterprise adoption of WebRTC, drivers for and against, and use cases. Brent will drill down into the rapidly evolving WebRTC ecosystem and show how enterprises can leverage a variety of providers to deliver WebRTC-based capabilities to employees, partners, and customers.
3. How will WebRTC impact UC?
Here consultant Tsahi Levent-Levi will answer the question of how WebRTC fits into the enterprise UC landscape, and how WebRTC capabilities, coupled with emerging messaging-based collaboration applications, have the potential to disrupt the legacy telephony and UC market.
4. Is WebRTC finally standardized?
With recent agreement on a mandatory-to-implement video codec, and Microsoft's embrace of WebRTC we'll look at where we are today with WebRTC version 1.0, the impact of Object RTC, and how close we are to ubiquitous WebRTC support across all browsers and mobile devices.
5. So what can WebRTC actually do for me?
We'll see firsthand how WebRTC is enabling new integrated browser-based collaboration offerings including UC, integration with cloud messaging, calendar and email apps, support for telemedicine, and new ways to bring remote participants into hosted meetings. We'll also show examples of WebRTC development capabilities.
6. What are some real-world uses of WebRTC?
In one of our most-anticipated sessions, we'll hear from end-user organizations that are leveraging WebRTC to deliver new services to customers, support new ways of working, and extending legacy platforms to the browser. We'll look at business cases, success metrics, and how enterprises and vendors are forming partnerships to drive innovation.
7. What does it all mean?
At the end of the day we'll close with a round-table discussion featuring me, Brent, and Tsahi, as well as Phil Edholm, president of PKE Consulting; Val Matula, senior director of multimedia technologies at Avaya; Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis; and Doug Tait, director of SDP product management at Oracle. The theme of this session is, "Will WebRTC Destroy or Enable the Communications Market?" Our goal is to digest what we've heard in previous sessions and provide attendees with some actionable guidance that they can take back home as they develop their WebRTC strategies.
I hope many of you are able to join us for Enterprise Connect 2015 in Orlando March 16 to 19, and that the end result of spending a day in this special WebRTC event is that you've achieved clarity on what WebRTC is and what it can do, what limitations remain, and what opportunities WebRTC offers to improve communication and collaboration within your organization.
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