IMTC Launches WebRTC Activity Group

By Steve Anderson, Contributing TMCnet Writer

The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (News - Alert) (IMTC) has apparently been taking notice of the rapid rise of Web-based real time communications (WebRTC) in the field today, because the group recently announced that it was forming a WebRTC activity group geared toward studying several key issues that crop up in the field of WebRTC.

Among the group's intended targets for study are the interoperability issues related to using WebRTC among several different devices, whether from a desktop PC, a mobile device, or similar other device. As standards for WebRTC continue to emerge from both the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force, the way those standards impact the larger community as a whole will require study and time to fully understand, hence the establishment of the activity group in question.

With the activity group, IMTC members will be able to better share information and collaborate on responses to the new standards and the associated interoperability issues that WebRTC poses. Already plans are in the works to develop a new test framework for determining levels of interoperability, conducting IOT events, running GAP analysis on SDO use cases, and several other critical points, according to the committee chair for the IMTC Technical Steering Committee Wu-chi Feng.

There's certainly plenty of development out there for the IMTC to consider and respond to, as evidenced by the WebRTC Conference & Expo, running June 25-27 at the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta, Ga. A host of events have already taken place with more to follow over the time of the event, including a WebRTC Workshop hosted by Google (News - Alert), and a series of demos showing off new products and services to boast WebRTC functionality.

So far the event has shown off some rather exciting tools and technologies. Requestec, for example, showed off both a banking tool and a product that allowed Flash users to communicate with WebRTC users, an issue that the IMTC's activity group will have to consider as it represents what is believed to be the first example of WebRTC / Flash interoperability yet.

The product demonstrations only went on from there as Teledini showed off a click-to-call system to help drive business by giving Web browsers an easier way to make contact with businesses, Crocodile brought out at Javascript SDK for secure network access on open source code, and so much more besides.

The IMTC's activity group is likely to be busy in the next several months; there's an enormous volume of material coming out in the WebRTC space. A host of new products, new services, new standards, and new interoperability issues are either actively hitting or are likely to hit in the next several months, which makes it a good thing the IMTC already has plans in the works to figure out how those various vectors of change in the field impact current operations. It's going to be tough going ahead in order to keep up with all that, but the IMTC should have things well in hand. Be sure to check out plenty of video from the WebRTC Conference & Expo, and all the other TMCnet events, right here.

(source: http://www.webrtcworld.com/topics/webrtc-world/articles/343653-imtc-launches-webrtc-activity-group.htm)