Finally, step forward WebRTC
It’s 2011, and WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is considered the communications technology of the year.
Fast forward to the present day and WebRTC is being merrily trumpeted as the next-big-thing.
So far, so ‘tech-hype-monster-never-takes-off’ snooze-fest.
Like many ‘revolutionary’ technologies, WebRTC has been promising to up-end corporate communications for many years. To date, it hasn’t.
Will 2018 be any different? We think it might.
To remind you, WebRTC was launched by Google as an open source project that would put video and voice calls directly inside a browser window. No need to download an app or install a plug-in.
Thus, webRTC eradicates a lot of faff. It gets rid of compatibility problems. It also removes the possibility of enterprise employees installing unauthorised software. That’s pretty dramatic.
But this is just the technical stuff. More important is what this lack of friction lets people do.
So far, the most notable progress has been made in the consumer space. When Amazon launched its Fire devices, its ads focused heavily on its ‘Mayday’ button. One click and the user could speak directly to a customer care agent – and it was all powered by webRTC.
Meanwhile in early 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 400 million Facebook Messenger users were making WebRTC-powered voice and video calls every month.
But what’s more interesting for anyone in the unified comms space is how webRTC is affecting the enterprise.
Naturally, as a UC company, Avaya has been exploring WebRTC for years. For example, it offers wrapper APIs that hide the complexities of WebRTC, and add features that are not available out-of-the-box. This makes life much easier for developers.
It’s even launched dedicated all-in-one WebRTC solutions. In 2014, it unveiled a ‘no-fuss’ contact centre solution with Google: Avaya Agent for Chrome. The aim was to dramatically reduce the time and cost of onboarding a new agent by replacing PCs that require proprietary software with webRTC-ready Chromebooks.
But it would be a mistake to see WebRTC as purely a contact centre tech. Instead, we should look at how it can embed communications inside every possible office function. And we should think about how that can make for smarter working.
Again, Avaya is already doing this. Last year, it announced a collaboration with Salesforce Service Cloud to integrate the two products more deeply. Effectively, it means a user can communicate from within Salesforce: make calls, log events, pre-define actions, call or message colleagues and so on.
In 2018, with a post-C11 Avaya newly focused on cloud strategy, we think this is just the start.
And, perhaps ironically, hardware will play a part in accelerating the WebRTC era. When making calls from a browser, it’s tempting to use the computer’s built-in microphone and speakers. Well, we all know how that can go.
This is why companies like Plantronics now offer webRTC-ready headsets, which deliver high quality sound. They also free up users’ hands and give them the ability to move around more easily. We shouldn’t underestimate the part these products can play in the rise of the tech.
So will 2019 will be a big year for Avaya and webRTC? We believe it will.
But we should say one more thing. Any discussion of virtualising comms inevitably leads to another prediction – that the desk phone is dying.
We think that’s nonsense. The desk phone was supposed to die 20 years ago when the soft phone arrived. It didn’t. Then the smartphone came along a decade later and, again, the landline was supposed to slope off to the scrapyard in the sky. Again, that didn’t happen.
We believe there will be a demand for physical handsets with buttons you can push for a long time to come. The point, however, is to give people choice. In the cloud era, that’s exactly what you can do.
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