(Image Credit: Respoke)
Digium, a firm which specialises in telephony software, has announced the launch of its ‘Respoke‘ platform which enables developers to add WebRTC to their applications. The PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) began as a virtual startup within the company, but has now been released for anyone to add powerful communication features.
WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a specification drafted by the W3C to allow direct browser-to-browser communications. Respoke allows developers to add individual and group chat messaging, voice and/or video calling, screen sharing, and file-sharing to applications. All of this can be achieved without a plug-in which often disrupts an otherwise seamless experience.
Other built-in features include; presence management, peer-to-peer data delivery, media relay (TURN), and access control using permission filters.
Developers who want to add such functions – which used to take weeks or months – can now add it in a matter of days via the Respoke API which the company describes as being based on a “robust, scalable cloud infrastructure.”
You can interface with the API using a JavaScript library, RESTful APIs, or via mobile SDKs which are coming soon. SmarterServices is a company which has made use of Respoke for their educational software and as a result were able to add audio, video, and screen sharing to their web app in a matter of days.
It appears that the team behind will be making an active effort to continue Respoke’s future development through taking and acting-upon feedback. On the company’s blog, Respoke lists these recent improvements:
- Released inbound calling and outbound calling functionality
- Added sample apps and developer tools to its Github page
- Introduced screen sharing capabilities
- Improved its documentation and community site
- Updated its pricing tiers to make things easier for customers
- Launched a redesigned homepage and user sign-up flow
More features are set for release within the next quarter which aim to increase compatibility and will see the release of dedicated SDKs for Android and iOS to enable mobile developers to add the same benefits which Respoke provides to web applications.
Respoke is priced according to the number of connections required and bandwidth used, but you can evaluate the service for free with up to five connections here.
Will you be adding WebRTC support to your applications? Let us know in the comments.
