Microsoft wants to reach the workplace before Alexa

Cortana Skills Kit for Enterprise could hook into existing Microsoft services like email

Microsoft is holding its annual Ignite conference in Florida this week, and kicked off by announcing that it wants to do for the workplace what Alexa has done for the home: make it smart.

According to a recent survey by Pindrop, less than a third of firms have voice apps to communicate with customers today - although 85 per cent expect to do so within the next year. Meanwhile, in the home, consumers can ask Alexa or Google to set their alarm, work their lights and switch on the oven.

Alexa dominates the smart speaker market, where Amazon's loss-leading strategy plays well with its comprehensive product offering. In the business world, though, Microsoft's many customers are looking to Cortana.

Microsoft is ready to give them something to look at with its announcement of the Cortana Skills Kit for Enterprise at Ignite, which bears the hallmarks of the existing Cortana Skills experience on PC ("Cortana, play Spotify"), with a distinctly business slant.

Customers who are invited to trial the new system will be able to build custom Cortana skills and then deploy them to their organisation. Developers can use Azure Active Directory to control when the skills are deployed and who can access them. The Azure Bot Service powers the development platform.

Javier Soltero, who became VP of the Cortana team this year, said that the addition of Cortana skills to the enterprise is "the start of a journey into a realm where voice and natural language are the primary means of interacting with technology." The aim is to make voice interaction as easy and natural as it is to use a smartphone today.

The range of possible skills is still to be revealed, but programme manager Vivek Goswami gave some insight: he imagined a scenario where employees could hook in to a smart building network and schedule an office clean.

As a proof of concept, Microsoft's developers used the platform to create an IT help desk skill. Employees can use it to file a ticket if they are having computer problems; Cortana can also connect them to someone who can help.

Although the existing Skills Kit for consumer skills hasn't been widely adopted, the Skills Kit for Enterprise could easily play on Microsoft's existing strengths, with the ability to check emails or contact information for meetings. It has the potential to be a compelling prospect.

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