User Reachability in Multi-Apps Environment

Abstract

Recent progress in web real-time communication (WebRTC) promotes multi-apps environment by creating islands of communication apps where users of one website or service cannot easily communicate with those of another. We describe the architecture and implementation of a multi-platform system to do user reachability in multiple communication services where users decide how they want to be reached on multiple apps, e.g., in an organization that has voice-over-IP, web conferencing and messaging from different vendors. Our architecture separates the user contacts from reachability apps, supports user and endpoint driven reachability policies, and has several independent and non-interoperable WebRTC-based apps for two-way and multi-party multimedia communication. Our flexible implementation can be used for enterprise or personal communications, or as a white-labeled app for consumers of a business.