What is the value of WebRTC to your business? The WebRTC standard was first drafted in 2012, and so is now approaching six years old. As someone who has been involved in the WebRTC integration space for four years now, it feels both old and new to me.
WebRTC still feels new because it’s just in the last year that Apple’s Safari browsers have begun to support it, who became the last of the major modern browsers to adopt the WebRTC standard. Codecs are still a regular topic of discussion for those doing lower level integration of WebRTC into call centers and communication apps. For those using a Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS), the intricacies of WebRTC may be abstracted away from their control, and the CPaaS market is continuing to grow and many vendors are still releasing major new compatibilities on a regular basis.
It seems like WebRTC is still new if you’re trying to keep up with everything about the standard and technology itself.
But I’ve always felt that the way you use WebRTC is more important than how your app is built. In other words, like all technologies, WebRTC as a video standard is useless if you don’t find a compelling use case for it that grows your business and delights your customers.
In that sense, WebRTC seems old because at this point we are rarely asked things like “What is WebRTC?” and “Can it really be used in the enterprise?” Of course, not everyone knows the term WebRTC, but most of us have used it in personal and corporate settings, even if we didn’t realize it. The ubiquity of tools like Google Hangouts, Slack (with video calls), Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, all show us that the concept of in-app video communications is quickly being taken for granted.
It’s for that reason that I’ve been saying for the last year that WebRTC is quickly becoming a commodity.
That notion has a big impact on software development companies like our team at WebRTC.ventures. It means that to better serve our customers, we need to do more than just say “We know WebRTC and CPaaS’s really well.”
We need to provide you with ways to launch your video-enabled product faster.
For that reason, I’m pleased to announce that you are going to see some big changes at WebRTC.ventures throughout the rest of 2018. When I first bought the domain name “WebRTC.ventures” several years ago, I did not envision us as a Venture Capital firm as the root domain Ventures implies, but I did envision us as a portfolio of products based on WebRTC technologies, and that is what we are finally becoming in 2018.
Our team has built from the ground up several product lines which we are now ready to license and customize for the most common use cases in WebRTC development.
We have products that can be customized to:
- telehealth
- online education
- customer support and sales
- and broadcasting audiences
Our new focus in 2018 will be on serving customers in those verticals who have a unique idea, but don’t want to build the video part of their product from scratch.
Allow me to illustrate with an example.
Telehealth is the most commonly requested industry vertical we get for WebRTC development. This has consistently been the case, and yet nearly all the telehealth solutions we have built for clients have certain base features in common. These include choosing a doctor or expert that you want to meet with, scheduling an appointment, and holding that appointment virtually using WebRTC video. It also often involves some basic features like text chat, taking notes, screen sharing, and sending files or images securely.
If these features are all you need then we already have it built for you!
However, I’ll venture to say that if you have a viable business plan then you are going to have to differentiate more than that. What makes your telehealth business plan unique?
Perhaps your differentiation is the market you serve, or how you conduct your sales and outreach. Or your differentiation is some unique feature that you need in addition to what we’ve built.
Either way, we can license and customize our base solutions to your need, which will let you get to market faster with a more complete product and leverage our expertise in the most time efficient way possible.
This is just one product we are licensing now, and in addition to Telehealth solutions our “Expert Consultation Platform” could also be licensed and customized for industries such as legal, accounting, online tutoring, language learning, etc. You can see an example implementation of this platform at UniCustomerCare.com.
Besides our Expert Conslutation Platform, we will also be licensing a tool for live interactive video with visitors to your website, which can be used for sales, customer support, customer interviews, and more. You can see an example implementation of this platform at Usabili.me.
The two products I’ve mentioned so far are ones that we own and license, but we will also be doing modifications to other products with open source licenses or companies that we partner with.
For example, we have recently been doing customizations to Tokbox’s Interactive Broadcasting System (IBS) for clients in a variety of industries.
The IBS solution built by Tokbox allows you to host interactive webinars where hosts can bring on guests, and then select members of the audience who can also turn on their cameras and ask live questions of the host and guest. This has wide applications in the entertainment, sports, and corporate worlds.
Our team worked with Tokbox on the development of IBS, and we can customize it for your use as well. We will also be using it ourselves!
We are about to launch a regular webinar series about the business of WebRTC where we will do short webinars on different WebRTC use cases, products we have built, products that we resell, and the industry as a whole.
Up to this point, you’ve known us at WebRTC.ventures as a custom design & development agency, specializing in WebRTC. We will continue to do custom development work for our clients, and we will contine to provide staff augmentation to larger clients who need WebRTC experts mixed in with their internal engineering teams. But we will become more select about the types of custom projects we take on, as our focus continues to be on improving and customizing our growing product portfolio.
So what is the value of WebRTC to your business?
Certainly live video is an important part of your business model, otherwise you would not have read this far. But your value lies in more than just the video. It lies in the business model you design and the customer relationships you create.
Let us help you get to the point of focusing on that value faster, by licensing our products to you as a “starter kit” for your live-video business. All customizations are welcome!
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Arin Sime is CEO and co-founder of WebRTC.ventures, a leading provider of real-time application and WebRTC development services. He has worked with enterprises and entrepreneurs around the world in a variety of industries. An engineer by background and an entrepreneur by passion, what excites Arin is the sheer joy of product creation and seeing someone’s ideas come to fruition.
