Temasys WebRTC plugin for Internet Explorer, Safari now available for licensing by services providers and developers

SINGAPORE – Oct. 7, 2014 — Temasys Communications, a global startup building the next generation of Web Real Time Communications (WebRTC), has announced the commercial availability of its WebRTC plugin for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari browsers.

Temasys is part of both the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards committee and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group that are defining WebRTC technology. Because of insight gained in those efforts, commercial release of its plug-in puts Temasys in a leading role toward making WebRTC ubiquitous by bringing rich, high-quality real-time communications, powered by WebRTC, to users of the desktop versions of Internet Explorer and Safari.

The new licensing-based model is aimed at service providers and application developers looking to add access to WebRTC-based solutions for users of Internet Explorer and Safari. Temasys received strong interest from developers earlier this year when it released its WebRTC plugin as a free download for end users.

Commercial licensing of the plugin for both widely used browsers is the next step in Temasys’ vision to propagate the technology, allowing unified communications and video conferencing companies, enterprises and IT professionals to use WebRTC as an evolution of their existing solutions.  As part of Temasys’ commercialization efforts, enterprise customers can now integrate WebRTC in a manner consistent with their own branding and user experience by taking advantage of the full range of available customization options, with more options to control their distribution, updates and security mechanisms.

WebRTC has emerged in recent years as an Internet-based method of communications for browsers and applications by which users can make voice calls, engage in video chat, share data files and more. While browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Opera natively support WebRTC, those from Microsoft and Apple did not until plugins began to appear this year. 

“The huge worldwide user base that already has Internet Explorer and Safari installed along with their Microsoft and Apple software operating systems was previously underserved in terms of high-quality audio, video and peer-to-peer data exchange,” said Temasys CEO Chip Wilcox.  “We believe that enabling WebRTC in browsers that lack any native support will greatly appeal to service providers and developers around the world who want to enrich their apps and service offerings by providing a more complete user experience for business communications.

“Following our free-plugin launch in May — which saw over 100,000 downloads in under 100 days and has accumulated several million minutes of usage — we were able to conduct valuable field testing and understand what the user experience was like in great detail. Our plugin has now evolved, with numerous updates and enhanced capabilities, essentially making it the de facto standard for Internet Explorer and Safari support  and delivery of WebRTC and allowing for parity across Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari when installed,” added Wilcox.

Smith’s Point Analytics, an independent market research firm focused on emerging mobile and wireless technology, has estimated the market for cloud-based RTC to be worth US$4.8 billion by 2018. WebRTC has tremendous potential to complement the well-established enterprise communications and unified communications markets, valued at US$30 billion, and the multibillion dollar telecommunications and over-the-top (OTT) services sector, all of which Temasys is well positioned to serve.

Users can download the plugin at https://temasys.atlassian.net/wiki/display/TWPP/WebRTC+Plugins.

Temasys is also staying true to its original pledge to drive adoption of WebRTC. The free plugin (with Temasys’ branding) will remain available for download.