Open Source WebRTC Plugin for Microsoft Internet Explorer Released by Priologic

I continue to see comments on UCStrategies and other sites about how the lack of Microsoft and Apple support for the emerging WebRTC standards in their OS-based proprietary browsers is impacting adoption. While popular open cross platform browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are all committed and have released WebRTC support, Internet Explorer and Safari have not. For many users this has not been a real issue as they have to just download one of the WebRTC compliant browsers, often finding that the overall browsing experience is better anyway. There remain some users who are only comfortable with their native OS-based browser and some organizations that do not allow their employees to use an alternative for security or internal control reasons. The result is that, until now, deploying WebRTC has been difficult, especially in the Internet Explorer world.

Priologic just released a new WebRTC alternative for Internet Explorer (IE), a plugin that enables IE users to have WebRTC functionality. This new IE plugin will be released under a BSD2 license that enables any WebRTC team to use it and enhance it either within their commercial products or as open source. Hopefully this stop-gap will enable the market to accelerate until the committed Microsoft support of the WebRTC standards is finally delivered. Priologic's CEO, Doug Pelton, says that other teams have done great work enabling WebRTC in the IE browser and have done it for free, but to date none have been open sourced. "EasyRTC is open source so it makes sense that we have an open source WebRTC plugin for IE," says Pelton. "Of course, the best-case scenario would be if Microsoft put full WebRTC support into Internet Explorer."

The Priologic approach of open sourcing the plugin (versus just making it a download from their site) has a key advantage in that it can be downloaded to IE browsers from servers located behind a firewall within a corporate IT infrastructure. It is relatively easy to load the code onto a server as a download for users in an organization. This enables companies or groups using IE for security reasons and banning downloads from the internet to now deploy full WebRTC capability to their IE users. As it is open source, it can be audited for security compliance as well, assuring it can be used in a wide range of applications. Further, the wide range of new applications and services that are emerging with WebRTC can offer the plugin on their sites or even load it automatically to their WebRTC web page deployments.

Priologic will be demonstrating the plug-in and discussing it at the upcoming WebRTC World Conference and Expo in Atlanta next week (June 17-19). This is great opportunity to understand how this capability, combined with other new capabilities and tools, are accelerating the WebRTC market forward.

In addition to the IE plug-in, the Priologic team has been busy and will be showing a number of technology innovations in Atlanta. They will be showing their EasyRTC iOS Native Client, EasyRTC Android Native Client, EasyRTC C++ native client and a new EasyRTC 3rd party adapter. The EasyRTC 3rd Party Adaptor is designed to allow Media Servers and WebRTC Gateways access to and from EasyRTC. The Adaptor makes many of the features that are difficult to build in pure WebRTC more accessible, such as recording, archiving and playback of sessions and access to the broader public telephone.