When you start pulling back the covers and realize how much is going on behind the scenes…It is both amazing and scary. Its a connected world. No doubt about that. Whether you are connecting through apps or a browser..or you don’t know, don’t care…there is a lot happening on our behalf.
I first struggled to understand exactly what problem we were solving here. At the risk of oversimplifying, the number one benefit to this communication standard: No More Plug-Ins. Those pesky little programs we have to update and run, just to get what is increasinlgy normal things done, when online. These plugins can be useful but they vary widely and are each proprietary to the vendor who developed them.
WebRTC, as part of HTML 5 is very close to getting us past this (and many other) hurdles. In development for years now, but making its presence known in 2013. Its worth understanding.
This is a standard that, instead of coming from the video codec and resolution world, is coming from the web world. The definition is being drafted by the World Wide Web Consortium and the IETF…two big and important standards bodies that have a lot to get right here, together. Its not a standard yet -- but this has not stopped it from being implemented already in several browsers.
WebRTC: Cullen Jennings talks with TechWiseTV
WebRTC: Demo from Paul O’Dwyer
WebRTC: Jimmy Ray Whiteboards the Meat and Taters
Watch this Space
This is a foundational change with big, positive disruption that will re-shape a lot of interactions we have today. WebRTC is a way of turning every browser, every app, into a HD quality video endpoint. This may first be evident in the browser, but don’t limit your thinking. Most of the quick app development we have seen these days is due to web-based back ends that are simply hidden from our view.
If you want to dive deeper. Here are some of the resources I found most useful when prepping for these shows we did.
Cullen Jennings explains WebRTC in a long but fantastically good and complete manner. I wish the audio were a bit cleaner here (Happy to help re-record for you in our studio Cullen!) but the value of the content over-rides these issues.
El Reg does a nice job laying out a high level explanation of WebRTC and explaining why this will be a market disruptor.
I like how Alan Quayle has broken this down in no jitter as it gives us a view from the communications perspective. There are respectiable hurdles here and this will round out your understanding.
A couple of other sites had great detail and may be good for some ongoing coverage if interested. Check out
From anExperts in Residence: Podcast from the early days I interviewed Cullen Jennings on the subject of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). We actually could not get the timing to work…so we had the team record him…then I went back and laid in my questions…so it sounds very stiff (on my part) as I listen back to it.
Hope you enjoyed and learned a few things. I know I have.
In March, I make an annual journey from Dallas to Orlando – not to visit that famous mouse or take a Spring break. No, I am there with thousands of IT, telecom, and networking professionals who have descended upon Orlando to attend Enterprise Connect, the leading conference and expo on enterprise communications and collaboration.
This year, both Jimmy Ray and Robb (along with the amazing TechWiseTV crew) joined me to capture all of the excitement, announcements, and cool demos.
If you missed the conference, don’t fret. We have all of the highlights here!
First, I caught up with Rob Lloyd immediately after his keynote to get the scoop on the Internet of Everything and how it will impact businesses.
While I was participating in a web conference from my home office, I started thinking about how much and how fast things have changed in the last decade around communications and how we use collaboration tools in the office, at home and on the road and most importantly the number of devices available to me so I CAN collaborate over distance.
One thing that stays constant in this industry is change, especially when it comes to devices. Let’s take a walk down memory lane and see if you can remember any of these once “have to have” mobile devices. The Nokia 9000, The Motorola “Flip phone” and The “Razor”, Palm Pilot, dare I say the Blackberry and of course at the start of 2007 the IPhone came on to the market — and we all know how that is playing out — this being a rarity. More recently, Samsung is challenging Apple with the Galaxy and DROID OS is becoming more prevalent than IOS. Last I checked, there was an estimated 1.3 million Read More »
Integrated Services Approach is validated by the Market
Just this week, Infonetics Research reported that Cisco, who has led the industry in its transition to voice-over-IP, has now emerged as the new market share leader for enterprise session border controllers (SBC) in SIP trunking deployments.
The way that enterprises connect to the outside world is changing. The transition to voice over IP (VoIP) that began with enterprise networks a decade ago, is now in full force in service provider networks. In a report issued on Monday, Infonetics Research reported that Cisco, the global market leader for unified communications and collaboration, is now the new market leader in global enterprise session border control (SBC) solutions for the first half of 2012, providing secure IP connectivity from the enterprise edge to the service provider session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking service.
Why is this so important? Service providers are now offering SIP trunking services instead of legacy dial tone (also known as time-division-multiplexing or TDM) to connect to enterprises of all sizes, including small businesses. In fact, according to their 2012 VoIP and UC Services Report, Infonetics forecasts SIP trunks to grow over 66 percent in 2012 alone. Customers are quickly embracing the new technology, which offers substantial cost savings and the promise of extending real-time rich-media collaboration applications beyond the enterprise to customers, partners and suppliers.
To begin realizing the benefits of SIP trunking, businesses need to deploy a session border controller in order to efficiently and securely connect to service providers while preserving voice quality and features. Session border controllers connect IP networks and provide session control, security, demarcation for better troubleshooting and interworking to help overcome differences in the deployment of the SIP standard (such as CODEC or signaling).
Cisco reinvents the collaboration edge
Cisco’s session border controller, called, Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) is a software license add-on to the widely deployed Cisco Integrated Services Routers (ISRs) and Aggregation Services Routers (ASRs). CUBE provides significant benefits over competitors’ stand-alone session border controller offerings. For example, CUBE enables customers to transition more smoothly to SIP trunking while reducing costs and operational complexity, often requiring no new hardware to be purchased or deployed. As a result, CUBE has been adopted by over 5,000 customers in 160 countries.
In their report, Infonetics credited Cisco’s differentiated model for delivering SIP trunking service, stating: “This is a natural extension of Cisco’s dominant market position in the router market—the majority of organizations have Cisco routers already installed and deployed at the important network border points.”
