Amazon’s Alexa AI voice recognition platform is growing up and getting a job. As announced today at Amazon’s re:Invent developer conference for Amazon Web Services, the company has unveiled a voice-activated virtual assistant version for the workplace, Alexa for Business.
Of course, there was nothing to stop businesses from using Alexa-enabled devices, as Amazon noted in this UK video:
With the launch of Alexa for Business, Amazon’s Web Services team can be more thoughtful and deliberate about the use cases that support work and productivity—such as booking and setting up meetings, including teleconferencing—with a range of capabilities that also includes adding data to enterprise-focused sales programs such as Salesforce, updating calendars, booking meeting rooms, filing expenses, doing timesheets and even enterprise security by authenticating different users.
Companies already testing Alexa for Business including WeWork, Brooks Brothers, Capital One, Vonage, BMC and Toyko’s Mitsui & Co., Ltd.
Amazon’s pitch:
Today, people spend too much of their day on tedious tasks at work, like managing their calendars, dialing in to meetings, or searching for information. But Alexa can help solve this problem by acting as an intelligent assistant at work. Alexa for Business makes it easy for you to use Alexa in your organization. Alexa for Business gives you the tools you need to manage Alexa devices, enroll your users, and assign skills, at scale. You can build your own context-aware voice skills using the Alexa Skills Kit, and the Alexa for Business APIs, and you can make these available as private skills for your organization. Alexa for Business also makes it easy to voice-enable your products and services, providing context-aware voice experiences for your customers. To learn more about how to use Alexa in your organization, visit http://amzn.to/2zrFvGX.
Alexa for Business – use Alexa as your intelligent assistant at work. Access tools to manage Alexa at scale. #reInvent https://t.co/h42IR69abc pic.twitter.com/lGpDrLx1VH
— Amazon Web Services (@awscloud) November 30, 2017
Having already integrated services like Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Translate, Amazon Comprehend and Amazon Rekognition Video, Alexa is primed to exponentially scale in business and bring the power of Amazon’s voice-enabled smart ecosystem to the workplace.
Alexa for Business offers Amazon two paths into the enterprise: first, via developers as AWS is now a service platform supporting AI, data and infrastructure, including analytics and custom business app and chatbot development via Amazon Lex.
The current crop of developers in the space is ripe for development of business applications as are enterprise partners like Salesforce, SAP and Microsoft. The second is employees, already comfortable with Alexa at home.
Richard Windsor, analyst at Edison Investment Research, said: “With the launch of Alexa for Business, Amazon is stomping with its size 12s all over the territory of its supposed new best friend, Microsoft and its digital assistant, Cortana.
“Alexa for Business will allow businesses to build their own skills for the digital assistant that can be used in a work context. It will also feature all of the normal functionality such as enquiries and smart office and is expected to feature partners like Concur and WeWork at launch,” as ZDNet notes.
“This has the scope to both generate more skills and applications for the Alexa digital assistant but also to generate increasing loyalty to AWS. Some of these skills are likely to include integration with Office functionality such as calendar management, meeting room scheduling and so on. If this takes off, there is no reason why this should not spread to the desktop and deeper into Microsoft’s core asset Office.”
What’s more, the Alexa for Business playbook “includes a bit of developer democratization and Apple’s well-worn consumerization approach. Amazon has carpet-bombed your home with Alexa-powered Echo devices and now this inexpensive hardware will be landing at an office near you.”
As the Wall Street Journal noted, Alexa for Business “will let companies build out their own skills and integrations for both practical and business use cases. Just as developers can build skills for Amazon Echo users, businesses can now build out Alexa skills for use within their own company. You could imagine voice access to an employee directory, Salesforce data on various clients and accounts, or company calendar information.”
#Amazon is putting #Alexa in the office https://t.co/ayBw9ShJQu pic.twitter.com/z94X03wEPq
— ProTransform (@ProTransformHQ) November 30, 2017
It’s been just three years since Amazon introduced the world to Alexa, living inside an Echo speaker in your living room or kitchen or bedroom and Alexa is predicted to reach 128 installs by 2020
With its characteristic prescience and virtually unlimited resources, Amazon is writing its next chapter and has paved the runway for taking Alexa to work. And as AWS’s Tara Walker notes in a blog post, “We’ve only scratched the surface” of how the Alexa for Business console and service features can transform work.
One hurdle, as TechCrunch notes — “the first challenge is getting large companies to invest in a huge quantity of Echo devices. Given the shift toward voice interfaces, it’s likely not a question of if, but when.”
The post ‘Alexa, Start the Meeting’: Amazon Launches Alexa for Business appeared first on brandchannel:.
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