Good morning, CIOs. The voice-powered digital assistant, which seemingly came out of nowhere and established itself in households across the U.S., is about to join the workforce, according to Amazon.com Inc.’s chief technology officer. Werner Vogels wrote Monday in a blog post about the possibilities of voice computing in the workplace, following Amazon’s November 2017 announcement of its new service, Alexa for Business. CIO Journal’s Sara Castellanos has the story.
“Just like Alexa is making smart homes easier, the same is possible in the workplace,” Mr. Vogels wrote on his blog, All Things Distributed. Alexa will be able to control the environment, help people find directions, book a room, report an issue, or find transportation, according to Mr. Vogels. Alexa faces increased competition from virtual assistants created by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc.’s Siri, and Microsoft Corp.’s Cortana, as WSJ has previously reported.
The voice interface is about more than a simple set of features, though. It has the potential to change the way people interact with computers. “The next generation of corporate systems and applications will be built using conversational interfaces,” Mr. Vogels writes.