Communications-enabling applications are well on their way to becoming mainstream, as Alan Percy, senior director of product marketing at Dialogic, notes. He points out that Snapchat, Uber, and WhatsApp are all examples of this, and that they have helped users understand the value of having a two-way, data-enabled instant conversation with a provider or friend, and without having to initiate a telephone call. Real-time communications, he adds, also has enabled a range of embedded systems and Internet of Things applications to reach out and communicate to the users that maintain or are affected by their processes.
Given the Real Time Web Solutions solution event takes place next week, we thought now would be a good time to talk more with Percy (who will be among the speakers at the New York City gathering) and Dialogic (which will be an exhibitor there) about this topic.
What are the values that real time brings to applications?
One of the drivers for enabling Real-Time Communications is reducing costs and delays. By using RTC, users and applications can share data,
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video and voice more efficiently over IP networks. RTC also brings rich multimedia experiences allowing users to see and hear the remote party, building relationships that can improve sales close rates, or keep friends connected. On a more practical side, multimedia enables remote diagnostic or instructional use of video to reduce truckrolls and improve customer satisfaction.
What factors are critical in planning for a real time web solution?
As this is a highly dynamic industry, a critical enabler for RTC applications is building applications on a platform that supports a broad array of RTC standards and media types. New more efficient codecs, video formats, and protocols are being developed on a regular basis and being prepared to support these new innovations (without having to develop them) is a significant business and time-to-market advantage.
What are the barriers to real time on the web today?
Today’s most difficult challenge for deployment of RTC remains universal browser compatibility. While this can be managed in enterprise applications, the typical consumer user has little patience for cycling through various browsers, trying to get an application to behave. Closing the gaps between Microsoft, Apple, and Google is a significant challenge that will have an enormous positive impact on RTC application adoption rates.
Why should Real Time Web Solutions Expo attendees sit in on Dialogic’s sessions and visit the company’s booth?
For those looking to see real-time communications in action, I’d recommend a visit to the Dialogic stand where we’ll [have] a live video interaction demonstration that shows some of the new voice and video codecs working together in a conferencing application. Both Vince Puglia and I have sessions we’ll be presenting discussing RTC from a technical and business perspective.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle
