Microsoft wants Cortana to do for the workplace what Alexa did for the smart home

In the span of a few short years, voice has taken center stage in the smart home. Thanks to advancements in natural-language processing that spawned digital assistants like Siri and the breakthrough gadget that was the Amazon Echo, it’s now a totally normal thing to talk to your house — for tasks as varied as setting timers to arming security systems.

In the workplace, however, voice is way behind. A recent survey found that just 28 percent of businesses use voice in their workflows at all. This isn’t for lack of interest: The same survey said 85 percent of businesses plan to integrate voice within the next year. And while Alexa and Google Assistant dominate the consumer smart speaker market, businesses are looking very expectantly at Cortana, since many of them are already Microsoft customers. Read more...