Temasys is Working on Something Big

WebRTC Feature Story

Temasys is Working on Something Big

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  November 05, 2014

Temasys provides a complete WebRTC solution, including a full set of WebRTC-based developer APIs, mobile development frameworks, and other client-side tools. Supporting these frameworks it also provides telco-grade, enterprise-ready infrastructure for companies and developers to both create and manage products and services, which embed or support video, audio, chat and the exchange of data.

As an active and working member of both W3C (News - Alert) and IETF, Temasys is helping to define the WebRTC standard. Temasys is one of only eight companies creating the very DNA of WebRTC, providing an implementation of the standard used by Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and most other browsers.

We recently spoke with Chip Wilcox, CEO of Temasys Communications, to learn more.

We spoke in June about WebRTC. How has WebRTC moved forward since then?

Since June, we have gone on to commercially license our plugin for Safari and Internet Explorer, enabling enterprises and developers to use our technology embedded into their products, in a manner consistent with their branding, and providing control of the interface.  We have also made it feasible for our customers to add in functionality like screen-sharing and support for alternative codecs, which are not part of the WebRTC standard today.

In May 2014, we launched our free plugin. Since then we logged 100,000 unique downloads in under 100 days, resulting in millions of minutes of actual use. With that experience, we can see a genuine demand for the technology. As more developers begin to realize its potential, as well as identify new use cases, we are in a position to support them and do so across all major web browsers.

Temasys has also expanded its team. 

Correct. We have brought in several talented people to help us scale up, including Nat Currier, our head of engineering, and Thomas Gorissen, a superstar technologist who is the mind behind the top JavaScript developer conference in Asia, JSConf.Asia.

Tell us about some of the real-life implementations of the Temasys WebRTC solutions.

We use WebRTC to provide real-time communications connectivity for solar-powered, satellite connected emergency medical services. In partnership with Renewable Energy Corporation Solar in Singapore, we donated a 20-kW solar-diesel hybrid container (SolarBox) to the Philippines Red Cross. This was a special project that we assisted with, to help the community of Sungko Barangay, who were affected by Hurricane Haiyan last year. In the past, we have also run live demos showing how we have been able to reach people in areas with poor connectivity, such as in the Arctic Circle, with our platform.

Temasys has also staged some interesting demonstrations.

We have been among the first to demonstrate the use of WebRTC for videoconferencing over satellite, and how to provide feature parity for browser-based, native desktop, and mobile applications. And we completed a proof-of-concept, and are undergoing preparations to launch a commercial product for WebRTC-powered video, audio, and chat solution for a market leading social business solution.


What are you plans for the upcoming WebRTC Conference & Expo?

Without being specific, I can say we will announce something big, and it’s a culmination of the last few months’ worth of work.
 

You believe the data channel is important for WebRTC. Explain.

Along with video, audio and chat, the addition of a data channel provides significant opportunity for disruption of existing transactional business models. We already see use cases in online gaming and transactions, including the under-developed financial transactions market and the rapidly expanding peer-to-peer payments industry. Temasys foresees that the availability of data channels will signify the most disruptive technology within WebRTC, and we are already working with a leading financial services provider in this field.

What are some of the hurdles to WebRTC that the industry needs to address?
We are at the forefront of this emerging technology, and perhaps the biggest challenge lies in adoption and support of WebRTC. Players like Microsoft (News - Alert) and Apple still do not have adequate mechanisms to support its potential. We have taken it in our hands to change this, by releasing free-to-use developer tools for IE and Safari. We are also working on getting WebRTC support into WebKit. Through WebKit, there is the potential to have WebRTC in web browsers on iOS.

If there’s just one thing you’d like people to know about Temasys and its WebRTC strategy, what is that one thing?

We see ourselves as the Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) of WebRTC, and we have a similar business model to AWS. Developers and enterprises, who we see as our long-term audiences, have access to Temasys’ client-side toolkits and the underlying infrastructure using a freemium model. We support them for free while they create, test, and deploy applications on our platform. When they go to market, and if they’re successful, then we start to share in that success by asking them to pay for the usage of our platform.




Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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