Report update: WebRTC market expanding and maturing, but in unexpected ways

I've just published a major update to the Disruptive Analysis WebRTC Market Status & Forecast report, which originally came out in September 2014. The update revises the key forecasts, and considers the shifts in industry structure and use-case that I've been seeing & talking about recently.

The headline numbers: 6.7bn devices are forecast to support WebRTC (on a broadly-defined basis) by the end of 2019. At that point, there are expected to be 2bn active consumer users, and 900m business users of WebRTC (with considerable overlap).

But digging beyond the updated market forecasts, it's important to recognise some key underlying trends:

• The definition of "WebRTC" is becoming blurry. ORTC, app-embedded WebRTC, plug-ins, 3rd-party PaaS & SDKs etc. are changing the landscape. However, only the purists really care - others just exploit the "democratisation" of creating comms apps and capabilities more easily
• In numerical terms, mobile implementations of WebRTC are starting to out-accelerate desktop browser-based ones, outside the enterprise. This favours either sophisticated developers able to build apps around the various WebRTC client frameworks, or those using 3rd-party PaaS solutions
• Many "big names" have launched WebRTC products and services in recent months, ranging from Cisco & Avaya, to AT&T, Tata and Facebook. This is a strong endorsement of the technology - and often integrated with a parallel shift to cloud-based services.
• Developer mindshare is increasing - helped by hackathons and presence at vertical events - but many in the web/app world remain unaware of WebRTC's potential. Enterprise comms professionals seem much more aware of it.
• While contact-centres are still the major WebRTC hotspot in enterprise, there is growing interest in mobile customer-service apps, and video-integrated collaboration tools. This overlaps the trend towards cloud-based apps, as well as new styles of corporate messaging / social-timeline approaches to communication.
• This is driving the "disunification" of business comms, as I discussed about 3 months ago. WebRTC-based DUC will grow much faster than WebRTC-based UC, although that has large potential too. There will be >300m business DUC users by 2019.
• The market for vendors selling WebRTC gateways (telco/enterprise) or commercial WebRTC platform-as-a-service is comparatively slow-moving, but starting to pick up steam. The last 6 months has seen considerable advances in uptake of "interoperable" use-cases. 
• However, developers often have a variety of open-source alternatives - and there is a growing suspicion that PaaS indirectly competes with vendor-driven products. Indeed, some vendors now have their own PaaS platform (Genband Kandy, Digium Respoke, Acision Forge etc).
• There are now more than 10 telecom operators with some sort of commercial implementation involving WebRTC, with several more with well-advanced plans and prototypes that Disruptive Analysis is aware of. Some have multiple initiatives
• For major consumer web services, WebRTC is creeping in, often with limited tests and deployments for obscure user groups - such as Facebook's video-messaging for Chromebook users. It's still unclear if Whatsapp's long-awaited voice service is based on WebRTC or not. 

In other words, there is a lot of noise and action - and indeed growing usage - but comparatively little hard cash at the moment. However, that is starting to change - CafeX's recent funding round is a good indicator, while discussions with vendors & PaaS players have shown growing awareness of better marketing and partnerships. This is also not unusual - there was a considerable lag between people using the web in its early days, and anyone (beyond ISPs) making real money from services or application infrastructure.

Ultimately, WebRTC is a technology which lowers the bar for both true innovators, and others doing today's services more easily/cheaply. In many cases, WebRTC adds value to something else - whether it's extending the reach of a conferencing system, or helping reduce churn by better customer-service. 

Overall, Disruptive Analysis remains bullish about the technology, both in the short-to-medium term, and in the long run as it converges with cloud, contextual communications and even aspects of IoT. WebRTC remains a fundamentally disruptive technology, and its ramifications are only at the first stage of being realised.

The new update is sold along with the full "reference report" from September, plus a one-hour briefing call and additional update later in the year. Contents and pricing/ordering details are here. 

I'll also be speaking or moderating at various upcoming WebRTC-related events:

• UCExpo, London, April 21-22
• Advanced Comms Asia, HK (April 28) & Singapore (April 30)
• WebRTC Expo, Miami, May 12-14
• Contextual Communications Workshop, London, June 15

Lastly, if you have any questions, or represent a WebRTC company or user, interested in setting up a briefing with me, please contact me via information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com

Initial thoughts on Enterprise Connect #EC15 & WebRTC

I'm in Orlando at the big Enterprise Connect conference and trade-show, covering business communications, especially for large corporations and government. Its main focus is on unified/disunified communications, collaboration, and contact centres / CRM. Yesterday was the WebRTC "conference-in-a-conference" and today is the main session with kickoff keynotes (and various briefings), although yesterday had some general plenary panels too.

Note: this was written on March 17th 2014, so "yesterday" refers to the 16th While I'm here mostly as I was invited to speak on a WebRTC panel, it's interesting for me to compare and contrast EC with many of the more telecom operator-centric events that I go to, on a more general level.

The first thing is that there seems to be much more pragmatism and individuality among enterprises than among telcos - they are focused on solving their specific problems, in their industries and specific geographic regions. There is much less need for businesses to feel the need for "industry-wide" solutions and standards, and more willingness to experiment and customise.There is a sense that most big companies will have their own in-house software development teams, as well as relying on systems integrators, consultants and a variety of vendors, cloud platforms and other systems. Few businesses have cookie-cutter communications functions or apps, even if the ultimate technology building blocks (eg SIP, HTTP) are the same.

The second thing is that there is much more of a sense that the "end-user" - whether an employee, an external partner, or a customer, is in a position of choice and control. While there is a slight wistful feeling that everything used to be much simpler when there was just a phone, fax and email, there is also a sense of excitement that new developments lead to improved productivity and better engagement. 

There's no disparaging reference to "OTTs" (or spiteful over-defensive recourse to regulators), merely a pressure on suppliers to come up with better, cooler communications systems that fit employees' or customers' needs. While security and compliance are important for many, so is customisation and empowerment. I hear phrases like "use the best tool for the job" a lot, or "multi-channel", as well as BYOD, cloud services and "customer journey". There's a recognition that employees or customers will migrate to whatever application or interface mechanism best suits them - and it's up to the enterprise and its suppliers to get it right, or give developers the right APIs so they can instead.

The third thing is that enterprise communications vendors - some of them the same companies that also sell to telcos - have a much greater awareness of user-interface design, the need to fit their products around users' purpose and workflow, web/app integration, and the need for optimised functionality. Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, Google, Unify and a whole host of others are at pains to show how slick their mobile apps are, or their ability to allow business processes to be adapted with visual tools. The word "workflow" is uttered 10x more than I'd ever hear in a telecom context.

Other things:

• I see the word "context" everywhere too. This is definitely the epicentre of the Contextual Communications trend I've been mentioning - and I can see it evolving further with the use of WebRTC, sensors, big data analytics and so on. Compared to the "any colour you like as long as it's a phone call" mentality of telecoms, it's refreshing. So much for VoLTE being "innovative". Aspect and Altocloud are among those doing context-based WebRTC applications for contact centres.
• Cloud is everywhere. That's not really news, but it is striking.
• Microsoft Lync (now clunkily renamed Skype for Business) is everywhere too. How it supports ORTC/WebRTC will be critical in future - although as every competitor has a full API of some sort, I'd be surprised if S4B doesn't as well.
• Messaging and timelines are everywhere. All the new collaboration tools look like they're heavily influenced by Facebook, Twitter and the like. This is good. 
• Apart from Mitel (which just acquired Mavenir), nobody seems bothered by the idea of integrating with telco applications, VoLTE or (I'm joking here) RCS. I asked a major telco's business videoconferencing unit representative if they'd be using ViLTE/IR.94 in future, and he didn't appear to have heard the term before.

WebRTC is also heavily represented, but often as a means to an end: an enabler or option, rather than a holy grail of some sort. That said, it's telling that the keynotes all now assume that everyone knows what WebRTC is, rather than introducing it as "a new technology for putting comms into your browser" as is still common at other events. It's also clear that WebRTC is not just "production-ready" but is also in polished, real products being bought and used in anger.

Quite a lot of new products are noticeably WebRTC-based, such as collaboration solutions like Unify Circuit and Cisco Spark (the renamed Project Squared) and the OnAvaya cloud contact-centre solution hosted on the Google Cloud (and with Chromebook integration).  That said, most of these also have other non-WebRTC options, either for legacy browsers, or where a better set of functions can be delivered via native applications. 

The Avaya/Google collaboration potentially points to really rich contextual customer-service features in future, depending on how much analytical and insight horsepower Google can bring to bear. Think about routing to different agents, using different scripts, plus video and other features, where the caller is using Android or logged into their Google account.
 
Various WebRTC-based PaaS and SDK providers are present here as well - Twilio, CafeX, GenBand Kandy have booths, and I've bumped into people from Temasys and Respoke (Digium) as well, while Avaya has an SDK to video-enable customer-service apps too. Interestingly, Vidyo is touting its own video-enablement  SDK, which is not WebRTC-based, although it is working with Google to get SVC capability working on the VP9 codec.

There's also a lot of interest specifically in mobile apps with embedded video-calling for customer service. Avaya demo'd a golf-related commerce app, which it said it said it had added video to in just 2 days with a single engineer. Other vendors also touted their ware for app-embedded video, and I was taken out for an evening by a major US enterprise, to discuss how they could enhance their customers' experience with something similar.

But perhaps the most eye-opening bit was the presentation by a number of enterprises - Medweb, UTHealth [University of Texas] and American Express - about existing, long-standing WebRTC deployments and their learnings from their use and deployment. Some are using it to improve vanilla videoconferencing, but others are integrating it into apps and workflows much more extensively. Medweb has a telemedicine kit which can give a video consultation while streaming output from a medical device (eg a USB-plugged ultrasound scanner) over WebRTC datachannel.

The bottom line: enterprise retains its lead in WebRTC in terms of sophistication of use-cases. While there's various cool WebRTC consumer apps - as well as big guns like Snapchat - it's really the corporate uses that are the state of the art. Contact centre use of WebRTC is nothing new, but it's definitely the turn of UC/collaboration to take the stage at the moment, with app-integration and workflows the next in line.

In fact, I'm starting to suspect that one of the main near-term opportunities for telcos with WebRTC is within their internal IT and communications infrastructure, rather than new subscriber services. At MWC there was an announcement of a WebRTC-powered video contact centre for operators, and at EC the lead customer on stage for Cisco Spark collaboration was from Telstra.

Note: Disruptive Analysis' research and forecasts on WebRTC include detailed coverage of enterprise use-cases, as well as telecoms and consumer web. For more details on the report click here or message me if you are interested in private consultations and advisory services.

Dis-Unified Communications: WebRTC & The Enterprise App Dilemma

Enterprise technology often follows consumer trends. Currently, in the mainstream telecoms world, phone call and SMS usage is being eroded by competing and fragmented IP and app-based platforms – the so-called “OTT players”. Instead of using a handful of standardised (but expensive and limited) services, people are voting with their thumbs and using a wide range of communications apps and tools, on a case-by-case basis. They offer a mix of functionality, low/free cost and "coolness" - Whatsapp, Skype, Kik, LINE, WeChat, Viber, Hangouts, iMessage, Instagram, SnapChat and so on.

In business, an equivalent trend (or threat) is brewing. It manifests as communications dis-unifying, despite the industry buzzword suggesting "unified" platforms are the only path to the future. As well as standalone VoIP and conferencing systems, we are also seeing specific instances of enterprise communications being carved out of traditional, centralised UC/PBX platforms and integrated directly into cloud-based applications and business processes.

In addition, business users who have never before had a PBX "seat" or extension (eg the self-employed, or startups) are using sophisticated mobile or cloud-based apps to enhance their communications experience. They are also using IP-connected phones and tablets, rather than legacy circuit-based communications.

Some dis-unification has always been inevitable - we all get invited to other companies' conferencing systems, webinars or even messaging platforms. Many in the business community use their own personal mobile and home phones, Skype when travelling, send messages with personal webmail - or indeed using the tools built-into sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. New collaboration tools like Slack are currently getting a lot of attention as well. These tools have mostly been used for communication between companies, but a fair amount (especially BYOD calls and SMS) has been between colleagues internally as well.

The question is what happens in future to business communications.

Disruptive Analysis sees two possible paths:

• Towards more fully-Unified Communications, where enterprise IT departments, working with their UC&C vendors and service providers, extend corporate communications platforms to mobile, to collaboration both internally and externally, and (via APIs and SDKs) blended into corporate line-of-business apps and web tools.
• Towards ever-more fragmented Dis-Unified Communications (DUC), where a declining fraction of a business's total voice, video or messaging traffic transits its own "platform", as employees extend the BYO model from devices, to BYOconferencing, BYOcontactcentre, and adopt applications and cloud-services that have their own contextual comms built in by their developers or service providers.

Disruptive Analysis believes that both trends will happen simultaneously, in fact - but just in different contexts. And WebRTC will be a catalyst of both - allowing UC to address more devices and use-cases, but also allowing "DUC" to encroach from adjacent software domains. (Non-WebRTC approaches will also continue as well, but most will converge over time, such as Microsoft's Lync Web API and ORTC)

We already see UC systems being extended outwards - for example "guest access" enabled in Cisco Jabber, or federation from MS Lync. WebRTC will extend this trend further - already seen in early implementations like Unify's Circuit. Hosted UC platforms offered by telcos are also starting to embrace WebRTC - a trend that is likely to be embraced by most vendors and major operators during 2015.

 

As in consumer markets, a core part of WebRTC-extended business UC proposition is around interoperability and identities being “anchored” in central systems, with well-defined numbers and identity (and security). This certainly makes sense for industries and companies with strict compliance and call-recording needs, for example - and it seems likely that these capabilities will be integrated into line-of-business apps such as doctors' practice-management or banks' trading platforms.

Conversely, other contexts have counter-arguments that communications-as-a-feature works better as optimised “islands”, disconnected from traditional UC platforms. A putative video-interviewing service for recruitment, built into a site like LinkedIn, would probably have no relationship with E.164 phone numbers or single-enterprise IDs. Similarly, clunky phone-number dial-ins for conference calls and webinars will gradually fade out - probably replaced with email addresses or other log-on IDs.

The real battleground, however, will be future vertical applications for business, both internally-focused and for B2C/B2B interaction. There seems little reason for an oil-company's field maintenance application (which might incorporate video interaction for remote diagnosis of problems) to interface with the UC system used at head office - especially if it is cloud-based and used for multi-way conferences with partners and suppliers as well. A security application, which includes both physical guards as well as CCTV cameras, would also likely be standalone.

The choice of communications components would up to the app developers, who may well choose a WebRTC platform provider, and look to support a broad range of endpoints, both with and without telephony capabilities. B2C interaction platforms on the web may also be decoupled from phone-based contact centres - although some will undoubtedly be multi-channel . In many instances, new models of communication will be invented - a permanent telepresence "window" between two offices doesn't really fit with the "call" and number-based UC system. The benefits of dis-unification (to users and developers) would likely outweigh the management/organisational downsides of UC.

Some of the DUC applications will be standalone communications services (as Skype, Talko and many conferencing/webinar platforms are today), while others will integrate audio, video or IM functions directly into other software or websites. Many, but not all, will based on WebRTC, perhaps using developer-centric 3rd-party platforms like Genband Kandy or Acision Forge.

The ramifications of this trend are huge - and largely under-appreciated by the UC community. Globally, there be 1.7bn people using communications as part of their work by 2019 - but Disruptive Analysis forecasts only 23% (400m) will have a formal UC/IP-PBX "seat" - and even most of those will use some form of DUC applications at least occasionally, as well as their main "corporate" system.

The other 1.3bn will use a mix of standard telephony (mostly mobile, GSM/UMTS plus a small % of VoLTE), or various form of VoIP, Video and cloud communications. Even among the hard-core of global "knowledge workers", there will be 600m who use WebRTC at least sometimes in their job - yet fewer than 100m of those will be using it in the context of their UC system. The vast bulk of business interactions via WebRTC will be dis-unified.

Put another way, by 2019, the number of dis-unified communications users in business will probably be twice the number using UC, whether premise-based or hosted. This is as big a trend in enterprise communications as so-called "OTT" apps are for telcos. 

For a full analysis of the impact of WebRTC on UC & DUC, see Disruptive Analysis' research report, which covers the enterprise market as well as telecoms and the consumer web. Purchasers will also receive an upcoming update document. Please click here for details.

Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis and author of this article & the report, will be at Enterprise Connect in Orlando on March 16-17, and UCExpo in London on April 21-22. Please contact information AT disruptive-analysis dot com for briefings, speaking engagements and private workshops/consulting