The WebRTC industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
On the March 13, 2024 episode of WebRTC Live, Arin welcomed Tsahi Levent-Levi, leading authority in the WebRTC community, for a deep dive into the technologies, opportunities, challenges, and key players shaping the 2024 WebRTC landscape.
Tsahi regularly talks about real-time communications, WebRTC, and CPaaS on bloggeek.me. His commitment to knowledge sharing extends to WebRTC Weekly, WebRTC Insights, and webrtccourse.com, where he simplifies and teaches WebRTC.
This episode began with an announcement on CommCon24.
Scroll down for Key Insights and Episode Highlights. Or, simply:
Watch Episode 89!
Key Insights from WebRTC Live Episode 89
⚡WebRTC unbundling gives us more efficiency and flexibility. WebRTC unbundling allows us to do things that we couldn’t do before. This gives more freedom to developers and makes it easier for them to pick and use only the parts they need, ultimately improving their efficiency and performance.
Tsahi says, “These are things that you can do because of insertable streams and the fact that WebRTC is now trying to give more power to developers and control to do whatever it is that they want. The other part of it is taking bits and pieces of WebRTC, ripping it out of WebRTC, and allow using them independently. Like WebCodecs, that allows you to use a codec and code and decode frame by frame without WebRTC. Or WebTransport, that allows you to send data quicker than you could with WebSocket or HTTP and then you build whatever you want on top of that.”
⚡CPaaS vendors face many challenges in a changing market. As communication changes, CPaaS vendors face big challenges. One of them is Zoom’s dominance in the market. This platform is changing the game for everyone, so it’s vital for CPaaS vendors to show why they matter to customers.
Tsahi explains, “CPaaS vendors have this challenge. First of all, they need to compete with each other. Now, they need to compete with Zoom. They need to explain to their customers that they are still relevant because we lose out of the market, but they’re not going to leave. Because if Twilio left, what would us small cockroaches say when the big Twilio is leaving. Should we stay or not? Someone needs to explain our reason to exist.”
⚡Preparation is key when transitioning from one CPaaS provider to another. Businesses need to thoroughly evaluate all available options to prepare for a seamless transition from Twilio Video. This preparation will ensure they select the most suitable solution for their needs. Tsahi says, “The market is more confusing than just saying, well, we’ve got video APIs, Twilio is not there, now who do we go to?”
Episode 89 Highlights
CPaaS vendors are faced with an important decision
CPaaS providers face a critical decision regarding their differentiation strategy. Tsahi explains the two main options and shares his views on them. He says, “They need to decide if they want to add their differentiation in the same level that Zoom is playing, which means inside the media engine. And then instead of using WebRTC or alongside using WebRTC, use WebTransport and WebCodecs and WebAssembly more. Or they need to go and say, WebRTC is our tech stack. This is what we’re using, and this is what we’re going to go with. The only problem with that solution is as great as it is, and I love it and I think that’s the way to go for many, it means that you rely on someone else, which is Google and libwebrtc.”
Is Zoom becoming a dominant CPaaS player?
Zoom has proven to be a key CPaaS player over the past few years, especially during the pandemic. They’re proactive about their security issues, always improving, and ready to innovate, which are crucial qualities for dominating the CPaaS market.
Tsahi shares his thoughts, “What worries me the most – if you remember, they had the security issue at the beginning of the pandemic? It took them, what? A week, a month, three months from beginning to end to go from the worst security offender to the almost most secure video conferencing solution out there. On an execution level, I haven’t seen anything like that. The ability of a company their size, with all of the stress that comes with a pandemic, to be able to execute so flawlessly, so quickly. So, they’re getting there, yes. But if they actually want to be in that market, they’re definitely going to become one of the more aggressive players and a challenge the rest of the market.”
Is the video API market getting too saturated?
There are still so many different options available in the video API market. Tsahi makes a valid point about the market getting too saturated. He says, “There are a lot of vendors in the market that are competing in the same space. And in many ways, the question is, do we have too many vendors out there doing video APIs with not enough customers?”
Security and privacy vary from platform to platform
When considering privacy measures for your platform, it’s important to first understand what it means for you. Or, better yet, what it means to your customers. Tsahi explains, “The question is, what is it that you want to achieve? Do you want to achieve privacy from the service provider? The one giving you the service, which is mostly end-to-end encryption? I want to be able to connect to others without someone on the internet other than us knowing about this conversation. That’s one. The other one is I want to talk to someone random, but I don’t want him to know who I am and harass me. Think about dating. In a dating app, I might not want to give my IP address to anyone else. And there is reasoning behind me wanting to hide that, and there are ways and means to do that in an application. But it starts by saying, okay, what am I looking for? What’s security for me, and what’s privacy for me?”
Up Next! WebRTC Live Episode 90
Where does WebRTC fit in the State of Broadcasting
with Dan Jenkins, founder and CEO of Nimble Ape and Everycast Labs and organizer of CommCon
Wednesday, April 10 at 12:30 pm Eastern
