CHANNEL PARTNERS EVOLUTION — WebRTC remains in the very early stages of adoption, but there’s no doubt it’s going to go big and present lucrative opportunities for the channel.

WebRTC and its significance to partners was discussed during an education panel titled, “What Do AWS, Google and Microsoft Have in Common? WebRTC,” at this week’s Channel Partners Evolution in Washington, D.C.

Michael Bremmer, CEO of Telecomquotes.com, was the moderator, and panelists included: Dean Manzoori, vice president of global cloud communications at Masergy Communications; Gregg Rowe, regional vice president of channel sales at Vonage; and Alan Rihm, CEO of CoreDial.

WebRTC is a framework for embedding communications capabilities — including voice calls, video conferences, instant messaging, file sharing and business application integration — in desktop and mobile browsers using a simple API.{ad}

“The main opportunity WebRTC presents for partners is it’s a way to connect with other customers in other businesses that doesn’t require a phone company,” Bremmer said. “That’s the main point of WebRTC. Everything in the browser can happen natively without downloads, without security risk because it’s happening on the Internet, not in your computer.”

Rowe said the number of use cases is interesting. For example, a realtor can conduct a screen share with a client and can point out things in a house while the client is somewhere else, he said.

“I think where we are today is very early in the adoption of the technology,” Rihm said. “It’s only been in the last couple of years that you’ve been hearing about it a lot. The technology works, it exists, but there’s a standards committee has to commit to the standard so that everybody can start coding against it and know that it’s stable. The technology’s stable, it works, and we have a real product on it that’s commercial, but I really think we are at the beginning.”

There’s much more that can be done with WebRTC, and “so much more value that could be provided to the channel and ultimately to their customer,” he said.

“Most cloud providers are trying to sell right to the customer and then cut the channel in as an agent,” Rihm said. “Whereas our vision is … deliver the solution to the channel and let them take it to the customer; let them deliver the value. They are already the trusted adviser, they’re better at servicing and supporting the customer, and therefore you should have a lot lower churn.”

The softphone in WebRTC doesn’t need a phone number, so the value of a phone number will become increasingly diminished with so many other communication options, Manzoori said.

“There [are] a lot of stakeholders in the telecommunications space that have a lot to lose if that happens,” Rihm said. “So I don’t even know if it matters if it’s a phone number or some other type of identifier, I think you’re going to have communication companies that still want to be providing the service to the companies that really aren’t in the business of running a telecom. They just want to consume it.”