WebRTC allows Real Time Communications to run within any browser. By providing the building blocks for high-quality communications such as audio, and video components, for use in chat and other communications applications, it promises to enable a new generation of video, voice and data web applications. WebRTC can be accessed through a JavaScript API, and allows developers to create their own RTC web apps. As a result, WebRTC has attracted much hype.

However, in recent years, it might be easy to think that not much has happened, and that WebRTC as not lived up to that hype. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, a great deal of momentum has built up behind the scenes. Its lack of apparent visibility might be blamed on the fact that many RTC applications are not transparent to the consumer. In the business world, though, the impact of WebRTC has been profound.

WebRTC has become a critical enabler in many business communications projects. For example, it is being used to dramatically simplify contact centre deployment from the cloud. WebRTC makes it possible to create a complete, cloud-based contact centre quickly and easily through the use of a simple Chromebox. All that’s required to create this cloud-based contact centre is the Chromebox, a screen or monitor, a headset, internet connectivity and cloud-based Automatic Call Distribution (ACD).

Users can access the WebRTC-based client via their Chrome browser, with the ACD being managed centrally. As a result, a business can set this up for around €250 per user, which is a market-changing proposition.

Similarly, WebRTC offers huge cost advantages for extending existing PBX solutions via the cloud – the browser becomes the user access point, not a costly handset or similar device/workstation. Furthermore, one of the initial perceived inhibitors to using WebRTC to create cloud-based PBX solutions concerned codec conversion (transcoding). However, that’s much less of an issue now, as most VoIP providers handle this integrally as part of their SIP infrastructure.

Of course, there’s a long way to go. The success of WebRTC relies on all common browsers being supported. Notably, Apple has yet to get behind it. So all Safari users – which, according to Statista, account for just under 11 per cent of all browser users, as of December 2015 – are excluded from using WebRTC apps.

Overall, WebRTC adds another convenient access point for ACDs – after all, most users access their CRMs tools, such as Saleforce, via browsers. But it is also a great example of how cloud service delivery is really taking off, without users even noticing, in terms of the unique solutions and the quality of communications it enables.