We are going to build amazing new voice-base, mobile experiences for customers.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce tweeted this morning.
Salesforce and Apple announced today a new strategic partnership. Looking to win in the enterprise, the partnership means that a salesperson can use Siri after a customer meeting to update that customer’s record with notes from the meeting. Salesforce will be redesigning its mobile app working with Apple and building Siri deeper into Salesforce mobile apps.
Tim Cook said in an interview: If you look at enterprise in general, voice has not been used as much as in consumer, we’re changing the way people work, and that’s always been at the heart of what Apple is about — changing things for the better.
In that vein, Microsoft announced today as well they are launching Cortana Skills Kit for the enterprise. The product lead, Javier Soltero said that:
The goal is to make Cortana skills and conversational computing in the workplace as easy to use as smartphones are today, requiring no lengthy introduction or user manual.
Enterprise is the next battleground for voice technology
I mentioned here after the special event Apple held, that maybe they were unequipped to compete in a voicefirst world. And this kind of sum it up: they probably are, and establishing this partnership to win the enterprise is a smart move. Shortcuts in apps, plus this integration, Apple can tap into Salesforce developers and its own platform developers to incorporate more Shortcuts and knowledge to Siri, they are basically crowdfunding the platform with knowledge. But this is also a response to Amazon and Microsoft partnership. Reportedly, Facebook is also partnering with Amazon to incorporate Alexa to their Portal smart assistant to be launch later this week, according to a report by Cheddar.
There hasn’t been that many times at the beginning of a technological wave, like we are now with voice, that companies have been collaborating in this way. It certainly didn’t happened for the Apple Store or mobile.
So in that sense, we will be hearing more about partnerships, to tap into each other’s strengths. If this isn’t a sign that voice is the next revolution in computing, nothing else might be. The question is who is next? And how long will this last?
