Real-Time Engagement Platforms are Driving Digital Experiential Revolution in Metaverse

Ranga Jagannath, Senior Director, Agora, highlighted that customer experience has become a critical need for enterprises in a brief interaction with Amit Singh. He stressed that real-time engagement technology (interactive, two-way digital video and audio) would be the solution to creating a more engaging and connected experience for the Metaverse

Please give us a brief about your organization and how it is adding value to the unified communication space in India.

Traditionally, real-time video and voice happen in dedicated standalone applications, but Agora recognized that people increasingly want to engage directly in applications they are already using. These real-time voice and video solutions were difficult and expensive to develop, requiring reliable and multi-path transmission of substantial amounts of data across many geographies and network operators. This patchwork of connections is prone to data packet losses and slow response times.

By focusing on building a solid network and releasing simple and easy-to-use SDKs and APIs for developers, creators, and influencers, Tony Zhao, Agora’s CEO, and a few friends met at his house in Silicon Valley. They wrote the first code set to create the prototype for SD-RTN. With the rapid adoption of SD-RTN, Agora incorporated and opened its first headquarters office in Santa Clara, California. Today, Agora has grown to include more than 1100 employees with offices worldwide in Santa Clara, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, London, and Bangalore. Some of Agora’s clients include Pragli, Bolo Live, Talkspace, Rooter, upGrad, Airmeet, Run the World, and Hallo.

In late 2013, Tony Zhao saw more and more people holding smartphones, which are ideal for video engagement, and he knew that many developers would want to build video-engagement features into their mobile apps. Hence, Agora was founded in 2014 by CEO Tony Zhao and Co-Founder Tony Wang. Agora was created to pack sophisticated technology and hard-learned developer lessons into a cloud service accessible through simple APIs, all to make future developers’ lives easier. Agora has engineering and executive teams worldwide, such as in Santa Clara, Seattle, New York, Washington DC, London, and Bangalore.

We are a global company that believes in having diverse perspectives as a core principle to our success because it helps us serve our customers across nearly every continent, in multiple languages, every day. Agora is a Real-time Engagement Platform as a Service (RTE PaaS) whose interactive voice, video, and messaging SDKs are embedded into mobile, web, and desktop applications servicing over 40 billion minutes of human engagements a month across the globe. Our technology enables developers to build applications that meet end users’ needs across all industries worldwide, including companies like Pragli, Bolo Live, Talkspace, Rooter, upGrad, Airmeet, Run the World, Hallo among others. Agora makes it easy for brands and developers to offer highly customizable, scalable, easy-to-integrate, and low-latency real-time voice and video capabilities to its end users.

What are the trends which are driving the enterprise communications space?

The last two years of the pandemic have profoundly altered enterprise communications, necessitating the adoption of new tactics and technologies to keep the lights on. Business cultures and models are still evolving as we make our way back into the office. In reaction to the effects these modifications are having on both internal and external company communications, as well as the technology required to define future success, a few trends are starting to emerge:

Transformations in the workplace: As Covid-19 spread, workplaces closed, forcing us to work remotely. There was a lot of ambiguity initially. However, now in 2022, we have a clearer picture that working from home (WFH) is practicable, welcomed, and beneficial for many people. A Harvard Business School survey found that 81 percent of workers no longer desire to work in an office setting full-time. This rapid shift to remote work has driven the need for a digital workplace toolbox with the tools in it that support collaboration, communication, and day-to-day operations. More than ever, these technologies are integrating into a digital workplace plan supporting organizational objectives.

Customer experience plays a defining role: Customer experience has become a critical need for enterprises, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Companies utilize various cutting-edge technology to recreate the in-person experience for customers at home and turn it into a shared experience. With the right content and live video solutions, businesses can create memorable experiences that boost engagement, brand exposure, customer loyalty, and sales. A digital experiential revolution is taking place in the foundation of real-time engagement platforms, with technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) aiding companies in enhancing customer experience. For instance, Metaverses use virtual reality to enable you to create digital representations of yourself to mimic real-world situations. When wearing a VR headset and entering a Metaverse environment, one can engage in virtual experiences.

Integration with existing systems: Communications don’t exist in a vacuum. On the other hand, an effective enterprise communication system acts as close to ‘plug-and-play’ as possible. The previous generation of communications suite developers loved proprietary tech and loved to lock out other services as much as possible. Today that is history. Any successful enterprise suite now needs to integrate with your existing systems.

The medium of communication is irrelevant: Think about how people speak: Although the media we use may appear to matter on the surface, the message’s content ultimately matters. And it is yet another trend we are currently observing. Convergence has already occurred to some extent, and more will soon follow. Team members discuss projects using collaborative applications and tools before moving on to cloud-based project management suites to implement these plans.

How is Agora leveraging emerging technologies like AI/ML, analytics, and automation to deliver a high level of customer experience?

Without having to create the technology or the supporting infrastructure for real-time engagement, Agora offers developers easy-to-use, highly flexible, and broadly compatible Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to embed real-time video and audio functions into their apps. Agora also employs AI and ML in several ways to offer clients globally high-quality live interactive streaming experiences.

Agora leverages the computing power of ML and AI algorithms on devices to offer more clarity and sharpness during interactive streams. Our Software-Defined Real-Time Network (SD-RTN) uses machine learning to dynamically control phone and video routing to prevent significant packet loss incidents and maintain reliable and consistent streaming. Additionally, we employ AI and ML to achieve lower bandwidth allocation during streams, ensuring that users in low-network environments receive high-quality live voice and video experiences.

Agora, powered by AI, helps with features and services like auto-adjusting bit rates and frame rates, excellent jitter management, network estimation model, noise separation in real-time, highly efficient video encoding, super-resolution, powerful anti-packet loss mechanism, ultra-low latency, and other. Chatbots, speech recognition and automatic alarms have contributed to AI’s massive growth. AI, in fact, powers numerous popular and cutting-edge platforms and applications. RTE uses the device’s CPU capacity to produce more sharp and clear interactive broadcasts while using less bandwidth. Businesses across various industries can use AI-powered interaction capabilities to create more dynamic live-streaming experiences, whether engaging with clients or internal teams.

The next phase will be to use artificial intelligence to anonymize data. The personalization of goods and services will rise due to analyzing in-the-moment human engagement to understand emotional patterns and engagement trends.

How do you see Metaverse revolutionizing the video, voice, and live interactive streaming space? How is Agora targeting to explore the Metaverse?

One of the biggest questions surrounding the Metaverse is whether it will replace real-life, in-person social interactions and experiences. When asked if this would be the case in 5 years, more than half (55 percent) said it was probably, according to Agora’s recent survey, which surveyed developers globally. Additionally, 72 percent believed real-time engagement technology (interactive, two-way digital video and audio) would be the solution to creating a more engaging and connected experience for the Metaverse.

Agora’s award-winning real-time engagement platform will enable connectivity between Metaverses, creating an even more connected and engaging user experience. It will help bridge the gap between limitless virtual and physical worlds, delivering Metaverse connectivity from one-to-one to one-to-many using any device. RTE will also reduce entry barriers by simplifying access to the Metaverse to something as ubiquitous as a web browser. Agora also supports popular developer platforms, making it easy for developers to build Metaverse experiences.

What are the challenges that users may face in the Metaverse?

According to the survey mentioned above, 33 percent of respondents said data privacy and security were the most significant hurdles the Metaverse has to overcome. Other top challenges that Metaverse will see include ecosystem interoperability (12 percent), community building (10 percent), disinformation and hate speech (10 percent), accessible tools for developers (9 percent), monetization (8 percent), creating a currency and payments ecosystem (7 percent), identifying users (5 percent) and lackluster hardware (5 percent). Debates on the Metaverse have made headlines in international media, particularly in light of the emergence of powerful tech companies that work to shield online users from harmful content. As sensitive use cases, users’ data, and immersive experiences call for improved encryption and attack protection, cybersecurity will also become a significant industrial vertical.

It is not wrong to say that enterprises will need to create their own infrastructure and framework to enhance their business model in unprecedented ways by moving from a digital business to a Metaverse business. However, the end-user must also keep themselves educated about the exploits in the market and do their best to avoid malicious sites and apps.

Centralized or decentralized Metaverse platforms are at a greater risk of cybersecurity breaches or attacks, how is Agora planning to overcome them to safeguard users?

Different systems each have specific vulnerabilities. It is on the software developers to foresee edge cases, consider how their platform or product could be exploited or used inadvertently, and take the necessary precautions to protect against them. In some cases, it is impossible to control all user actions, and it becomes essential to provide users with ways to protect themselves and create a way for communities to self-moderate.

Agora’s ethos is to provide the foundational framework for real-time digital engagement. Every stage of our infrastructure focuses on security to protect our network from malicious attackers. In addition to safeguarding ourselves, Agora gives developers the resources they require to protect their consumers’ data privacy and online safety. Additionally, we support token authentication, which enables developers to control the encryption mode, keys, and user authentication.

Agora also enables developers to respect privacy laws and control data flow through geo-fencing. It allows developers to pass some levels of privacy on to their users by supporting dynamic passwords on channels so that users can set the key for their communication.

What are your top focus areas and your plans for expansion over the next 2-5 years?

The need of the hour for businesses is to keep customers at the forefront and build seamless online experiences to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds. We are fostering engagement across all the environments people live, work, and play in. We welcome all developers and enterprises to reach out and explore how we can help them make a digital transformation. Agora will keep concentrating on important sectors where RTE has a significant impact, such as remote education, virtual events, and similar fields.

India is also witnessing an upsurge in the adoption of watch parties, the Metaverse, and the integration of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in daily lives. In a post-pandemic world, India has witnessed an upward trend in adopting AR and VR tech alongside the Metaverse as businesses have come up with innovative solutions to operate in the new normal. Today Metaverse is expanding its roots deep into various sectors creating limitless futuristic possibilities in almost every industry, such as Gaming, BFSI, Retail, and many more. We look forward to partnering with businesses to integrate real-time engagement solutions.