Lifesize Introduces WebRTC-Based Conferencing on Cloud Video

This week, Lifesize announced the availability of WebRTC-based access to the Lifesize video cloud. Lifesize delivered integration of WebRTC-based video conferencing and web conferencing into its cloud collaboration solution through Google Chrome and WebRTC. This solution enables guests to participate in Lifesize cloud-based video, audio, and web conferencing apps from a browser without a plug-in or download.

With this announcement, Lifesize is reinforcing the company's commitment to cloud delivery of collaboration services as well as the increasing velocity of WebRTC as a component of innovative solutions. Through WebRTC integration, the clumsy, and often time consuming and delay-creating downloads of a proprietary client by a guest are eliminated. In the Lifesize implementation, a guest can join a video conference with access to all of the features of the solution without download or delay. Joining is as simple as clicking on a URL, accepting the camera and mic sharing and beginning to collaborate.

Craig Malloy, Lifesize founder and CEO, commented that "...until now video collaboration tools haven't met the needs of the growing number of organizations migrating to cloud-based apps. CIOs can now scale video - and empower employees to freely reach all internal and external stakeholders - without increasing complexity or demands on infrastructure and support." As can be seen, WebRTC is the key component in "freely reaching all Internal and external stakeholders."

Through this announcement, Lifesize joins the rapidly growing group of enterprise players, including Cisco, Unify, Vidyo, and Citrix, that have chosen to use WebRTC as the basis of their guest access. This is an increasing trend, and with Google moving to h.264 support in Chrome, and Microsoft moving to WebRTC through ORTC in Edge, a world of open web-based communications is rapidly taking shape. For many users, communications events are becoming URLs. The age of Real Time on the Web is happening, and the result is a dramatic change in how we join and use communications. These solutions are both simplifying the process of participating as a guest in a collaboration event, while simultaneously enhancing the rich capabilities of the platforms for both internal and guest users.

WebRTC is rapidly becoming not a differentiator in and of itself, but the doorway to enabling each of the enterprise vendors to showcase their capabilities and value adds to the collaborative process in an open and easy-to-use structure. This announcement continues to show that system-level federation is not required when anyone can join any meeting from any device through the power of WebRTC and the evolution of the web to a real time environment. The world of web-based communications is accelerating.