Priologic Software Inc., founded in 2003 and headquartered in Victoria, BC Canada, provides dedicated enterprise software teams to large enterprises. easyRTC Enterprise is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) built to accelerate enterprise WebRTC projects.

Doug Green, Publisher of Telecom Reseller, speaks with Doug Pelton, Founder and CEO of Priologic, about WebRTC, the company, and their easyRTC Enterprise solution.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Right-click and choose “Save Link As”) (Duration: 11:56 — 5.5MB)

The design and build and ultimately ongoing maintenance and operations of WebRTC requires a number of experts to ensure the system is secure, reliable and scalable. The many roles required to fully staff a WebRTC development team include:
• Project Manager
• Business Analyst
• UX Designer and graphics
• Web/HTML5/Javascript UI Developer with WebRTC training
• Mobile Developers with WebRTC training
• Middle tier Developer likely proficient in Java
• Database Designer/Modeler/Developer
• WebRTC signaling/SIP specialist
• Network specialist ICE/STUN/TURN
• Security specialist
• Database DBA
• Unix System Administrator

Once a WebRTC project has moved into production the operations team may need to provide 7×24-support, as WebRTC becomes mission critical. This means the team makeup will need to switch but the team size is likely to stay the same or even expand.

A large WebRTC operation should have redundancy built into each layer of the operation including the Unix server, database server, WebRTC signaling server, Application/Web server, etc. The servers of all types should failover gracefully when a hardware failure or outage occurs.

Instrumentation to detect and correct load issues and assist the operations team must be built or specialized to support the WebRTC environment.

It’s all a bit overwhelming, but if you believe as I do that WebRTC is likely strategic, a game-changer, and that a large portion of our business processes will be remodeled to take advantage of WebRTC, then a move to fully support Enterprise WebRTC must start now and be in production within the next year to 18 months.

WebRTC In-house or Platform-as-a-Service?

There is a tradeoff between total cost of ownership and control over the WebRTC environment. Initially a small number of WebRTC users and developers will be supported by the first Proof-of-concept projects. Cost per user for small a project will be minimized by using a Platform-as-a-Service and relying on the sharing of the operations team across the needs of many similar customers. The real question is “Does the cost of an in-house team ever get cheaper than a WebRTC PaaS and if so when?”

Because WebRTC signaling requires very little bandwidth and storage my guess is that PaaS will always be cheaper and will continue to be as the size of the user base for the PaaS expands and the cost of both bandwidth and storage costs decrease over time.

By sharing the WebRTC needs of hundreds of companies, the share of the operational costs becomes very affordable for each company.

A similar argument holds for sharing the development costs of WebRTC based applications.

As a given WebRTC PaaS and accompanying WebRTC applications are built-out over time, the cost of building that software shared over many companies also becomes small.

Doug Pelton is the CEO of Priologic Software and is leading our effort to build-out easyRTC Enterprise, a WebRTC PaaS.

Priologic’s easyRTC beta, a bundle of Open Source WebRTC joy, won the BestWebRTC Tool Award at the WebRTC Conference & Expo at the S. San Francisco Conference Center November 28.

easyRTC beta will launch mid-December with easyRTC Server Kit, easyRTC API, and working, HTML5 and Javascript, application source code under a BSD 2 license.

“WebRTC from scratch is hard. It takes a lot of trial and error setting up a Linux server and writing gnarly client code to get traction,” says Pelton. “easyRTC is intended to give developers quick, easy access to WebRTC. Instead of spending Christmas to New Years setting up WebRTC, spend an hour setting up easyRTC and then explore WebRTC by hacking our working application code,” says Doug Pelton, founder and CEO of Priologic.

Priologic is based in Victoria, BC Canada and provides senior Dedicated Enterprise Software teams to Fortune 100 companies operating in the Pacific Time Zone.

Priologic’s easyRTC beta, a bundle of Open Source WebRTC joy, will launch mid-December with easyRTC Server Kit, easyRTC API, and working, HTML5 and Javascript, application source code under a BSD 2 license.

“WebRTC from scratch is hard. It takes a lot of trial and error setting up a Linux server and writing gnarly client code to get traction,” says Pelton. “easyRTC is intended to give developers quick, easy access to WebRTC. Instead of spending Christmas to New Years setting up WebRTC, spend an hour setting up easyRTC and then explore WebRTC by hacking our working application code,” says Doug Pelton, founder and CEO of Priologic.

For a sneak preview of easyRTC, Priologic will be at the WebRTC Conference & Expo at the S. San Francisco convention center November 27-29, 2012 at booth 19. Priologic is based in Victoria, BC Canada and provides senior Dedicated Enterprise Software teams to Fortune 100 companies operating in the Pacific Time Zone.

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/11/26/priologic-announces-easyrtc-bundle-open-source-webrtc-joy

http://blogs.hbr.org/erickson/2012/09/the_rise_of_the_new_contract_worker.html

Excerpt:

“Driving Efficiencies through Deployment Choice

Gartner also highlights virtualization as another key trend emerging in the workplace today, for which Cisco offers our customers a broad set of choices. For example, virtualized collaboration applications including Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unity Connection can be supported on Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS) or qualified third party servers. Or, customers can optimize their virtual workspace through Cisco’s Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), an architecture that provides high quality voice and video to virtual desktops in an end-to-end virtualized environment. In fact, the majority of new server sales for Cisco collaboration applications are on virtualized UCS.

Virtualization is also the foundation of a Cloud-powered Collaboration experience, and Cisco provides many options for public, private and hybrid cloud deployments. More choices, same capabilities, one integrated, consistent and high quality collaboration experience.”

Read the full story on the recent Cisco blog.

http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/cisco-recognized-in-leadership-position-in-the-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-corporate-telephony

Becoming a backseat driver in your own business. The Priologic Software Inc. founder wanted to work less, so he spent the past two years building a management team to take over

Priologic Software Inc. Founder and CEO Doug Pelton
Business in Vancouver – Tue Sep 25, 2012

Business in Vancouver’s “How I Did It” feature asks business and community leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week’s issue, Victoria businessman Doug Pelton, founder and CEO of Priologic Software Inc., explains how and why he assembled a management team to take over from him so he could spend less time at work.

“We’re a dedicated enterprise software team, and we market into the San Francisco area. Our teams work from here in Victoria. Years ago, I could have gone down to Silicon Valley and probably made more money, but I made a conscious decision that I wanted to stay in Victoria.

“We build custom software for various clients. Our main client is [Cisco Systems Inc.]. A couple of years ago, I started thinking, ‘Man, this is getting really hard. I’ve got 14, 15 people, and I’m grinding away, still writing code.’ It gets to be quite a slog. I was looking for some relief. So I said, ‘I’ve got to get at least a second in charge.’

“I’m close to 55, and I have some health issues I’m working on. They’re manageable. But the business is now my largest asset, and it remains my largest asset only if it’s still operating. A couple of years ago, I don’t think the business could have continued if I had to leave for health reasons or something.

“At some point, you want to enjoy your life, too. I still have a 10-year-old daughter. I’d like to be around and spend a bit more time with her. I was working very hard. I wasn’t having much fun. It can be 60 to 70 hours a week sometimes. When you own a company, it’s really hard to take a vacation. I remember times when a two-week vacation meant a $20,000 loss. Now I’m pretty sure the business will run well if I’m away for two weeks or a month.

“It’s been about two years that we’ve been building the management team. It was really important to me that it’s somebody I can trust. I had met Miles Vasey [now managing director] years earlier, and I’ve been tracking his progress over 10 or 15 years. He was the right guy at the right time. I called Miles up and talked him into joining us.

“We didn’t just hire Miles – we hired a director of finance, a director of sales and we’re looking for technical recruiters. We now have a staff of 25. It took quite a few people to flesh out a team that I could be completely comfortable with, but at some point you have to trust your team to do it, otherwise you’re going to keep doing it [yourself].

“I’m now trying to stay out of the office as much as I can. I’m down to about eight hours a week now. I’m trying to get more exercise and get more fit, take a few vacations. I just got back from Quebec, and I’m going to Haida Gwaii for a couple of weeks.” •

Q&A

Q: When you groom someone to take your job, is it hard to put your ego aside?

A: There have been a few times when I wanted to jump in and countermand, but I try not to because it’s not   productive.

Q: What is the most profitable business practice you use?

A: The Rockefeller one-page plan and nailing a positioning statement.

Q: What’s the best part about having more free time?

A: I spend a bit more time with my daughter, and I’ve got time to read a book.

From building a business to building a team to building a better life

2003: Pelton launches Priority Automation Inc.

2004: Company lands first large enterprise client, Cisco Systems Inc.

2009: Pelton decides to start grooming a successor

2010: Pelton hires Miles Vasey, who makes transition from director of operations to managing director

April 2010: Company rebrands as Priologic Software Inc.

2012: Management team fully assembled, Pelton takes his first vacation in years

http://www.biv.com/article/20120925/BIV0201/309259962/-1/BIV/how-i-did-it-doug-pelton