We all know WebRTC as the standard that will bring real-time communications (as its name suggests) to browsers on the Web (as its name also suggests). But what if real-time isn't where the biggest action turns out to be?
Tsahi Levent-Levi has an interesting post on his site, Bloggeek.me, about an often-overlooked element of WebRTC: The data channel. In the post, Tsahi discusses some innovative ways that companies could use the WebRTC data channel on peer-to-peer connections to accomplish tasks like streaming and sharing that now use services like Dropbox and BitTorrent. He also envisions an architecture that sounds to me a lot like Skype's original "supernode" concept, where peers take part in content delivery networks (CDN), and browsers even have Web servers embedded in them to help handle loads in streaming scenarios--moving to architectures that feature "serverless" networks for at least some services.
In other words, WebRTC is potentially about more than just voice and video, and it seems to me that possibly its greatest successes might come in data transfer over the Web.
Data transfer doesn't require real-time performance. If Web browsers can replace BitTorrent or Dropbox clients, it seems to me that these services' business models (such as they are) would be at least as threatened by WebRTC as Skype's or any enterprise voice or video vendor's.
Scaling is a much more critical factor in a network that requires real-time performance. Remember that Skype moved from its "supernode" model to one that incorporated servers as it scaled up.
It's not so much about what WebRTC can do, from a technical perspective. It's about what a vendor/service provider can make money doing with it. As Tsahi says, "WebRTC is a technology and not a service."
So far, you can make a real-time service over the Web, but it's not clear that you can make such a service pay. Brian Riggs alludes to this in a piece that he recently did for No Jitter, looking at UC integrations for Google Apps. On paper, Google Apps could be a threat to Microsoft Office, but assuming that UC provides a business advantage to an office productivity suite, that advantage is proving difficult to monetize in a purely Web-based freemium environment. As Brian demonstrates in his post, adding business-grade UC to Google Apps right now requires an integration partner like Esna, gUnify, or Broadsoft to handle the UC component. His bottom line on using native Google UC functionality is:
"Hangouts is already listed on the Google Apps for Business product page as one that enables 'chat, phone and video calls.' But, as I noted recently, this is more wishful thinking than reality. Sure, Hangouts provides video conferencing that can be used for business purposes. Sure, users can add telephone participants (up to five) to a Hangouts session. Sure, users can dial phone numbers from Gmail. But these comms features are not business-grade as of yet. I think of them more as services that are great for consumers, usable by business, but in no way on par with communications solutions and services designed specifically for the enterprise."
Freemium services proliferate on the Web; a few even make money. But few enterprise-grade services are running over this model today, especially of the real-time variety, and as Brian says, there's actually very little appetite for doing business-critical work via these kinds of services.
Again, it's not about what you could do with the technology; it's about what developers will do with their time. Which do you think you're more likely to see: The 186th variation of Pinterest, Snapchat, Dropbox, or a similar such web-based service--now better than ever, inside your browser! Or a business-grade voice or video service running over the Web?
Which is not to say that WebRTC's role in delivering voice and video to the enterprise won't take off; it's just going to be a much more complicated picture. Luckily, Tsahi Levent-Levi is going to be sharing his insights on WebRTC with our audience at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2014, via a just-announced Workshop on "Fundamentals of WebRTC for the Enterprise." Tsahi's workshop is taking place on Wednesday, March 19; two days earlier, on Monday, March 17, Brent Kelly and Irwin Lazar will be leading our day-long WebRTC Conference-within-a-Conference, which will provide a deep dive including tutorials, panel discussions, and demos.
You can check out the full Orlando program here.
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