Transform WebRTC Media Server & Application into Agentic AI Platform

Many organizations that adopted WebRTC over the last decade built reliable conferencing platforms around mature media servers such as Janus, Jitsi, Kurento, or FreeSWITCH. Today, these organizations want to introduce Agentic AI capabilities—AI meeting assistants, digital avatars, voice agents, real-time translation, meeting summaries, and conversational AI. The common recommendation is often to migrate to a newer media server ecosystem that offers built-in AI integration. However, such migrations are expensive, risky, and frequently unnecessary.
SpringCT recently helped a customer preserve their existing investment by integrating Agentic AI into a production conferencing platform built on Janus Media Server—without replacing the core media infrastructure. Instead, SpringCT designed and implemented an intelligent media bridge between Janus and LiveKit, allowing both platforms to coexist seamlessly. The result was a significantly lower implementation cost, minimal business disruption, and a future-ready architecture capable of supporting AI-driven experiences.

Customer Challenge:
The customer had already invested several years in building a conferencing platform around Janus Media Server. The platform included:

• Multi-party conferencing
• Screen sharing
• Recording
• SIP interoperability
• User authentication
• Meeting management
• Custom moderation features
• Mobile and web applications
• Operational monitoring and deployment automation

As the customer planned to introduce an AI-powered avatar service, they discovered that the third-party AI platform was tightly integrated with LiveKit for real-time media processing. The straightforward approach appeared to be replacing Janus entirely with LiveKit. However, this raised several concerns:

• Rebuilding years of WebRTC development
• Rewriting media workflows
• Revalidating production stability
• Migrating thousands of lines of client code
• Re-testing every conferencing feature
• Increased deployment and operational risk
• Extended project timelines

The migration effort threatened to outweigh the actual AI implementation.

SpringCT's Evaluation:
Rather than recommending a complete migration, SpringCT performed a detailed assessment of the existing platform. The evaluation focused on:

• Existing media architecture
• WebRTC signaling flows
• Publisher/subscriber management
• Recording workflows
• SIP integration
• Conference control APIs
• Client SDK dependencies
• Scalability requirements
• AI integration requirements
• Latency expectations

The assessment revealed that over 90% of the conferencing platform remained fully capable of supporting future business needs. The only missing capability was seamless interoperability with AI services that expected LiveKit rooms. This insight changed the entire implementation strategy.

Features That Would Have Been Impacted by a Full Media Server Migration:
Replacing the media server would have required extensive redevelopment across multiple layers.

• Media Layer: Publisher management, subscriber handling, simulcast configuration, bandwidth adaptation, recording pipeline
• Client Applications: Web SDK changes, mobile SDK changes, room lifecycle, device management, ICE and signaling changes
• Server Components: Conference orchestration, user presence, media event handling, monitoring, analytics
• Operational Components: Deployment automation, scaling policies, production monitoring, existing troubleshooting tools

Each of these changes would require development, QA, production rollout, and user validation.

SpringCT's Solution:
Instead of replacing Janus, SpringCT introduced a Janus–LiveKit Media Bridge. The bridge allowed both media servers to operate together while serving different responsibilities. The bridge continuously monitored activity within Janus conference rooms. From the application's perspective, nothing changed. Human participants remained connected through Janus. AI participants appeared as regular conference users.

Janus-LiveKit Media Bridge architecture