CUSTOMER magazine recently spoke to Acision (News - Alert) Engineering Director John Parr about WebRTC, what the company is doing in this realm, and its plans for WebRTC Conference & Expo.
What do people need to know about Acision?
Acision connects the world by powering relevant, seamless mobile engagement services that interoperate across all IP platforms and enrich the user experience, creating value and new communication opportunities for carriers, enterprises, and consumers across the world. After leading the mobile messaging industry for over 20 years, Acision is uniquely positioned at the convergence of next generation mobile communications, which is built upon carrier-grade technology, infrastructure, security, and support.
How is WebRTC part of your business today?
WebRTC is integrated into our rich communication client FuseMe and Forge product.
How is your partnership with Crocodile going?
Crocodile has integrated well into the Acision core business and its technology and assets are a extremely good fit within the Acision product portfolio, providing additional value-add capabilities and functionality, particularly to new products such as FuseMe and Forge by Acision. It also means Acision can now extend its new mobile engagement services to beyond mobile operators to the enterprise and developer community.
Has the data channel in WebRTC opened up new opportunities in the enterprise?
The data channel is very useful for some applications, but there are many enterprise use-cases that still require data and messaging to be routed through the network (for policy control, audit trails, and interworking).
What are your expectations for WebRTC adoption?
We believe by the end of the year we’ll see many examples of WebRTC being used in consumer applications, and it will be standard for enterprise unified communications and conferencing.
Do you have plans for native mobile application with WebRTC or the Google (News 
- Alert) Media Engine?
WebRTC and HTML5 cannot really replace native apps today as you still need a solution for push notification and multi-tasking/back-grounding of web-apps. Once those features are available web-apps will be capable of doing what native apps can do today – but by that point there will doubtlessly be new native OS features used in native apps that web-apps can’t support. I think there will be a good case for native apps in many situations for the foreseeable future. The Acision SDK has native libraries for Android (News - Alert) and iOS that use the Google Media Engine.
How do events like the WebRTC Conference & Expo help the WebRTC community?
Sharing ideas for different applications of WebRTC stimulates creativity in the industry.
What do you expect to be the hot topics at the event?
We think the debate will have moved on from the previous hoo-ha around video codecs and signaling and will be centered on practical integration and implementation issues. There will be more emphasis on native mobile implementations and use cases than previously.
What will you be doing at the WebRTC Conference & Expo in Atlanta?
We’ll be demonstrating various applications built on the Acision SDK, implemented as web apps and natively for mobile, including our Engage demo for customer service and sales in a retail environment.
Why did you decide to attend the event?
We believe out of all of the WebRTC-focused events, this is one that provides us with great value, networking opportunities, and positive exposure in front of the right audiences.
What do you hope attendees will learn about Acision at the event?
We want them to understand how we have changed since the Acision partnership, the benefits this has brought to our WebRTC business proposition, and how we have evolved. We have lots to show and offer this year with new ideas and initiatives we want to share, so we value the opportunity to do this at WebRTC Conference & Expo.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
