WebRTC: "Revolutionary," or All Hype? (Part 2)

In part 2 of this Industry Buzz podcast, Dave Michels moderates a debate among UCStrategies Experts about WebRTC. Topics explored: what does it mean, its importance, whether it is over-hyped, and whether it is going to change our lives. The discussion includes UCStrategies' Phil Edholm, Steve Leaden, Russell Bennett, Kevin Kieller, and Art Rosenberg.

For more information on this topic, as mentioned in the podcast, visit the WebRTC World website, and the WebRTC Conference and Expo, November 27-29, in South San Francisco.

Also on this topic:

• WebRTC: "Revolutionary," or All Hype? (Part 1 of podcast)
• WebRTC Conference and Expo, San Francisco, November 27-29, 2012, by Phil Edholm
• WebRTC All Hype? by Dave Michels
• WebRTC as a Service, by Dave Michels

Dave Michels: Hi, this is Dave Michels with the UCStrategies team and today we're going to talk a little bit about WebRTC. It's the "in" buzzword right now. A lot of organizations, a lot of websites, a lot of vendors are talking about WebRTC. What does it all mean? Is it important? Is it over-hyped? Is it going to change our lives, or not? That's today's topic...the discussion below begins part 2 of the podcast.

Dave Michels: I understand what you're saying (Phil), I really do, but it's not all of a sudden. The Oracle's of the world today have no problem activating real-time communications in their applications. There are lots of ways to do that. If you're at an enterprise setting, you could be a plugin on the desktop, if you're not in an enterprise setting you could enter your phone number, we'll call you; there are all kinds of ways they can do that, and they don't. And tomorrow, what you call tomorrow, it's not going to be necessarily much easier, because not every desktop is going to be UC ready, even though they have the browser. And so, and I think the biggest winner, by the way, of this whole space, we've been wrestling with who's going to win with WebRTC - I think the biggest winner is going to be Plantronics. I think that all these people out there with browsers that now want to start making phone calls, can start buying headsets so they can start making phone calls and interacting with their applications in new ways. Now, that's a great opportunity for Plantronics and I think they'll still probably benefit from that, and other headset makers, but I don't think everybody's going to go buy a headset, either. And as I was saying earlier, there are lots of places where I use my browser where I can't make a communication, I can't have a conversation. And that assumption can't be there that, "oh he's online, he's on our webpage, therefore let's ring him." "Therefore... we're not going to give him the information he's looking for, we're going to call him instead, because we're super high service..." That's going to drive me crazy; it's going to drive lots of people crazy. Today I go to websites today that just start talking to me, it drives me crazy, I can't stand those websites. And so the fact that I have a player in my browser as a native default, doesn't mean that I want to use it. And so I just think that - I love WebRTC, you Phil, put me in a position where I fight it. I love - I'm a big champion, I love WebRTC, I just feel like I need to mute your enthusiasm because it's completely over the top, it's not going to change life as we know it tomorrow. It's not going to change life as we know it next year. It's not going to change life as we know it in five years. It will gradually change things and people that can benefit from it will definitely benefit from it, and people that can't, won't. That's it. Those are my thoughts on it. I want to hear Russell's.

Russell: Thanks, Dave. I realize that Phil is a great proponent of WebRTC, in fact, I even saw his name mentioned on a video I watched, a Google video talking about WebRTC. And obviously Steve is not so positive. I have to say that I am something of skeptic right now. Mainly because I'm sure I don't know enough about it. So my comments are just going to be a series of questions for which there may be answers, I don't know what they are yet, and also a couple of observations.

First of all, to address the question about whether WebRTC is a soft client or not, it is a soft client, it's just hidden in the browser. And there are three or four major market share browsers out there, IE, Google, Safari, and Firefox. And the implementations of WebRTC inside of each of them will be subject to differences. We already know that Microsoft has proposed its own competing version of WebRTC called RTCWeb, and that the Google guys have already said that to get WebRTC into Internet Explorer, they're going to have to do that via a Google frame plug-in that will go into IE. Already they're going to struggle with supporting a given standard inside of every browser. That's kind of one of my first observations. Another one is that this is by no means a revolution, it's just an evolution. You know, we've been through the main frame to client server, cloud and browser cycle. You know, we've been through the browser, HTML, Java, intelligence at the edge, intelligence for the core, intelligence at the edge cycle. This is just another cycle in the technology development curve.

In terms of people just being able to call each other by clicking, yes of course they will, if somebody reaches out to them and says, "hey call me or if you want to answer this question, click here," then that is possible. What I don't understand right now is how I discover people who haven't sent me a link, or people who aren't advertising a link on a particular browser to get a particular question or issue addressed. So there's a whole discoverability thing. How do I get hold of Phil Edholm? I have no idea in WebRTC. I may find his website using an internet search and then I may find a link. But just to do it from my browser straight off the bat is going to be very hard.

So there's also the question of what is this for; what is the problem that's trying to be solved? And the problem that's trying to be solved is interoperability, which we've spoken about extensively between various different vendors' UC implementations and the lack of federation as well. And already, in Lync 10 but also in Lync 13, there is a fully browser-based Lync client which is a Reach client or the attendee console, I think they used to call it. And if you're not a Lync user, but somebody from Lync is offering you the opportunity to join a conference call or just a one-to-one call, you can already have that conversation through your browser. So this is by no means revolutionary, it's evolutionary.

Another question that I would like to raise is the fact that there are only about four wideband codec's available in the world right now. One's GIPS, which was bought by Google, one is Microsoft's Real Time Audio, there was another one, a third-party codec was bought by Skype which they now call Silk, and also there's a Russian version by a company called Spirit DSB. All except Spirit are now owned by the big vendors. And Google is proposing their implementation as a standard or an "open standard" which kind of sounds like Cisco and its telepresence standard. It's just proprietary technology being offered on a non-Royalty basis or a zero Royalty basis. This is an attempt to bank some kind of business leverage.

Dave Michels: What about 722? I mean are you talking audio or video, can you clarify a little bit?

Russell: I'm talking about audio now but it equally applies to video codecs. There are different implementations of wide band video codecs and obviously there's compensate tensions between the various different owners of those codecs. So in terms of Google offering this to everybody free to the planet as a resource, I am a little skeptical about that. I was actually looking for the smoking gun before I got on this call, which would lead me to believe that they're trying to build a global communications service to the point I made in an article fairly recently. I kind of saw it but not really.

The other thing is that you know this notion of a few lines of code gets you all these wonderful communication services... That notion's been around for years. I personally shipped a product that did that 10 years ago and I was demonstrating writing communications applications and script on the SuperCom trade show floor in 2002. So there is nothing revolutionary about that. The problem that hasn't been solved is how you turn a little demo app written on a few lines of script, into a usable commercially viable application that addresses all kinds of problems related to feature interaction. This problem has not been solved yet. I saw Broadsoft kind of demo this a couple years ago at their user group, and they were able to scribble out a couple little applets that seemed to work. But the devil's in the details, and transferring calls, or all this kind of thing, are all problems that I currently don't know the answer to in WebRTC.

There's just a few observations, I don't want to belabor the point. These are things that I don't currently have answers to like I say, that doesn't mean to say there aren't answers to them or that the answers won't be developed in the future. But just open questions from me right now. Back to you, Dave.

Dave Michels: Thank you, Russell. You touched a little bit there on the open source versus licensed or propriety codecs. That of course is the heart of it, the current debate within WebRTC but specifically around the video codecs. There's the original Google camp that was pushing the VP8 codec which is part of the GIPS technology that they bought, that Google has announced that is intended to be open source. Whether it stays open source - that's not Google's issue - the Intellectual Property Group is threatening to sue and possibly turn that into a licensable, if they can win, licensable technology. The heart of that debate, though, is the innovation that could come from WebRTC that Phil's talking about. And so if it's open source, then anybody could write applications that could work with the WebRTC clients and servers. If it is proprietary codec, it has to be licensed, then that would curtail innovation. That's the heart of that argument. And it will be interesting to see how the standards groups sort that out.

Dave Michels: So I know that Kevin had an opinion, Kevin, why don't you share your thoughts?

Kevin Kieller: Thank you very much, Dave. And to the listeners if you've made it this far - congratulations. You've shown great perseverance because we've certainly heard some differing opinions, a lot of hype, and then some reality. Back to the top, Dave asked three questions with regard Web RTC and I'd like to try to answer those.

Dave asked, is Web RTC important? Not particularly.

Is it overhyped? Absolutely!

Is it going to change our lives? Very doubtful.

You know, when Phil started he did a great job of describing and defining Web RTC because it really is about putting a real time media engine into the browser. It's about building that in. As Dave points out, most of us have real time media engines in our browsers. They're called add-ins. And so the fact that Web RTC is building this in potentially into some browsers; as Phil says, it's in Chrome if you specify a certain flag and if you're techy or geeky enough to do that... But this isn't a revolution, it's really a nice-to-have that is built-in. Dave and I previously did a Google hangout, which didn't use WebRTC, but did a fabulous communication (job), and it was a fabulous communication environment and we talked about this with some proponents of WebRTC and it seems that when we're - when people are describing WebRTC and the positive benefits of it, they always have to resort to analogies. But like Russell, I have some questions.

What is the value proposition of Web RTC? What does it allow me to do tomorrow that I can't already today?

Because I know today that if I go to a website I can click to chat with an agent. I can click to have the agent call me. And as I think Dave very importantly points out having the agent phone me on my PC is making a lot of assumptions that are generally going to be false. I may not have a good network connection. I certainly may not have a headset. I may not even have speakers that are adequate on my PC. So today we already can have contact center agents call us at any number whether that's our ubiquitous, smart mobile phone that Art will be happy that we are definitely all carrying, or whether that's the phone that's sitting on my desk, we already have that use case covered. And arguably this isn't being used and I don't see any reason why WebRTC makes that any more prevalent.

And the other thing in the discussion that I see from the proponents of WebRTC is just the oversimplification. Sorry Phil, but when you say, just like the browser WebRTC is simple, the browser that's sitting on your tablet or your iPad or your desktop or your smart phone is probably one of the most sophisticated pieces of software that has been highly optimized over almost every other app that you have. So the fact that the browser and websites are seen as simple really just goes to show the great amount of work and effort that's been put into place to make that seem such. And I think when we see it as simple or even looking at something like federation and we think that that's a simple connecting of organizations, the tremendous amount of effort that goes into exchanging information between organizations, for instance, with email and blocking spam, that's one of the most sophisticated exchanges of information that's undertaken by organizations and enterprises, as Steve points out when dealing with enterprises. The notion that I simply want to be connected unrestricted by anybody anywhere, I think is just false. And, as was pointed out by Russell, how do I find people and all of these other communication facilities transferring, presence, directories, different permission and contact levels.

Russell also speaks to - and I think Russell you called it the Lync attendant, which is a different client, it is the Lync web app client that already exists. It works whether you're in Safari or IE. And it provides free to any end user the ability to contact an organization that's deployed Lync. So this facility already exists in Lync 2010. In Lync 2013 they're actually even improving that. And yet that doesn't change the world, it doesn't change our lives, and similarly, I'm going to argue back to Dave's original question, WebRTC is interesting. It can be part of a future solution. I certainly believe that the mainstream venders will support WebRTC as one of the types of clients. But it absolutely isn't going to change the lives of any of us or create a revolution in the communication space. And with that, back to you Dave.

Dave Michels: Thank you, Kevin. Art, did you have anything to add?

Art Rosenberg: I just want to add some observations on where WebRTC fits in the future. I rather agree with my colleagues in saying that this is not necessarily revolutionary. It is definitely going to make things simpler in terms of levels of integration between applications, and those are both communication applications, which are person-to-person, as well as process-to-person contacts and how they can be quickly initiated and responded to. But I think that the bottom line is when we talk about real time, the one thing that end users will not find is that they have more time to spend on real time connections. As they find that they can use other forms of asynchronous messaging and immediate notification, chat and so on, that voice connections and certainly video connections, person-to-person, are going to be less important. There will be times when it's useful and needed, but the bottom line is that people in business have to communicate and that includes consumers - then they will be using all the other forms of contact - text messaging, as well as voice messaging and asynchronous messaging in general. So that's number one.

The last thing that I wanted to comment on is the role of WebRTC in the contact center. Yes, it will be useful for "click to contact," "click for assistance," if you will, but as people, consumers, customers are now more mobile and they have multi-modal devices - namely smartphones and tablets - it is not necessary for them to have voice conservations to get assistance. There will be chat, which has already been there for a while. They could add in video, if that is appropriate, and of course voice. But the question is now, it's not person-to-person, they are not picking a particular person to talk to - it's anyone who is available. And this will be something that could be done on demand, as a supplement to increase use of self-service applications that they can now get access to. These are online applications, but they can do it from their smartphones. And when they need information, they can go directly through a search - this is where the browsers will come in - in terms of finding information and if the information is not adequate and they still need assistance, then they "click for assistance." But that assistance could be in a choice of modalities. It's not always going to be real time.

So I think that while WebRTC is going to definitely help the level of integrations across the different forms of communications and integrations with this cross automated self-service processes, it's not going to be revolutionary, it's going to be evolutionary. We have done it before, but it was a little more difficult and a little more time consuming. Now things will be easier to implement; but how it's going to be used is not going to change dramatically, as people start using their online information access rather than person-to-person contacts in business as a consumer or customer.

So the contact center as far as how I'm concerned, is changing into what I call an interaction center, where customers are dealing with self-service applications, not just people. So the term "contact center" has got to evolve to that level of interaction. And that's my comment and back to you.

Dave Michels: Well with that, Phil why don't you wrap up a few closing thoughts, I know you have an event coming up.

Phil Edholm: Thanks, Dave. Obviously WebRTC is a pretty controversial topic. I think the views range from "gee, it's just another technology and it's going to be absorbed," to "it really is the same kind of change that the web engendered." But I think the thing that is really obvious from this conversation is, A: lots of people don't know about WebRTC, and what it could mean, and there's a lot of new information being generated; it's moving at almost light speed. And B: regardless of whether you're an enterprise telecom person, in a vendor, in a contact center, this is a technology you need to pay attention to.

So one of the things, as we close here, I encourage you to pay attention, visit the WebRTC World website to find out about WebRTC and get the latest information, and also look up the WebRTC Conference and Expowhich will be November 27-29, in South San Francisco. It is being hosted by TMC, the folks who do the ITExpo Shows. This will be a real opportunity to hear from the leaders in the industry. Not surprisingly, Google and Plantronics are Diamond sponsors, reflecting the comment that was made earlier about Plantronics and their interest in this.

But there are some other companies that you probably would also be interested in. People like Ericsson and Oracle and Twilio. Companies like Zengaya that are actually looking at how WebRTC changes their business as well. This is an opportunity to hear from essentially the leaders in the industry, get a real solid overview of the where the standards are at, where the issue are at with video, the 264 discussion you heard earlier, as well as what the browser plans are from folks like Google, Mozilla and Ericsson as well.

So for those of you who are interested in this, go to WebRTC Expo and check it out, and I look forward to seeing you there. With that, I'll turn it back to Dave and thanks again.

Dave Michels: Alright, well thank you very much for joining us in this podcast and we'll be back next week with something even more interesting.