As my colleague Brent Kelly and I prepare for our WebRTC conference-within-a-conference at Enterprise Connect 2014, our primary focus is to use the day to deliver a "reality check" on WebRTC, providing attendees with insight into what's real, what's not, and the opportunities and challenges afforded by the technology. Several events in the last couple of weeks are providing a look at both WebRTC's potential, and its ongoing constraints.
First the Good News...
WebRTC is Here! Genband this week brought the first WebRTC-enabled enterprise unified communications solution to market with its release of SmartOffice 2.0. The platform features support for WebRTC-enabled browsers (Chrome and FireFox) with plug-ins for other browsers.
Genband's announcement, I believe, is the first of many that we'll see leading up to and during Enterprise Connect. Other vendors, like Unify, have announced plans to deliver similar offerings, while just about every UC vendor has publicly stated its interest in WebRTC. I expect you'll see WebRTC solutions rapidly enter the contact center arena in the early part of 2014, as well as vendors seeking to be the first with a generally available "click-to-call" in a Web browser capability. Behind the front-end software lies an increasing array of WebRTC gateways and session border controllers from the likes of Dialogic, Oracle, and Sonus to support security and policy enforcement requirements.
WebRTC Hardware is Coming! (Well, at least VP8/9-based hardware). Google recently announced that a number of chip manufacturers including ARM and NVIDIA will support hardware acceleration for VP9, while the LG Nexus 5 phone will provide hardware acceleration for VP8. This hardware support offers much better battery life and performance for VP8/9-based WebRTC sessions, and a Google-counterweight to the argument that H.264 is a better video codec choice because most mobile devices already support hardware acceleration for it. But, this isn't the end of the story.
Now, the Not-So-Good News...
The Video Codec Question Remains Unresolved: At the last IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) meeting late in 2013, the working group made an effort to determine a "mandatory to implement (MTI)" video codec, with the popular choices being Google's royalty-free VP8 and H.264AVC. While Chrome and Firefox already support VP8, Cisco attempted to give H.264 momentum a shove by offering to pay royalty fees for all, and providing a binary that anyone could use to add H.264 to their Web browser or application.
Cisco's argument is that H.264 is already widely supported in the video conferencing, browser and mobile spaces, and that adopting H.264 for WebRTC would speed adoption, reduce complexity, and alleviate the concerns that Apple and Microsoft have about adopting the Google-developed VP8/9 codec.
Cisco's effort was met with tepid support from the FOS (free and open-source) representatives, afraid that if they modified and recompiled Cisco's binary, they could face royalty fees. Meanwhile Google, as expected, gave no indication of a willingness to abandon its own codec.
So the IETF moved to resolve the issue by taking the discussion to its mailing list, where the debate not only covered H.264 and VP8, but also a variety of other older and lesser known approaches, as well as the option of not having a MTI codec. A straw-poll of group members produced some interesting results, with 59% of members supporting making H.264 MTI and 58% supporting VP8. However, just 47% supported making both codecs MTI. Thus, the working group chairs have decided to table further discussion until six weeks before the next IETF meeting in November.
Given that WebRTC support with VP8 exists only in Chrome and Firefox, I expect that vendors wishing to deliver WebRTC solutions will support VP8 in the immediate term and a plug-in for IE and Safari. Thus, the market may decide the video codec winner before the IETF can reach agreement (assuming it can reach agreement). Of course the risk here is that Apple and Microsoft will never support VP8, or they'll implement an H.264 (or proprietary)-based solution, meaning greater complexity and the risk of products that only work with certain browsers, with no ability for end-to-end sessions between disparate browsers.
Enterprise Awareness is Lagging: In Nemertes' 2014-15 enterprise technology benchmark, we're asking senior-level IT leaders about their WebRTC plans. So far the early results aren't real promising. With a couple of rare exceptions, participants are telling us WebRTC isn't on their radar. Either they haven't heard of the technology, or they don't really understand it or its value. That says that the vendor community (and yes, analysts) need to spend more time evangelizing the transformative capabilities of WebRTC. Those enterprises that have started the evaluation process are at a very early stage; we've yet to uncover any actual real-world deployment plans, or even trials at this point in time.
So where are we today? The promise of WebRTC is leading to real-world practical solutions and new services, but significant adoption and awareness of benefit issues remain. Come join us in Orlando in March to discuss the above issues and more!
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