Alexa, What Is Your Potential?

TAMPA, Fla. - Jan. 19, 2017 - PRLog -- Alexa, What Are Your Skills?

Perhaps, one of the most popular tech tools of the year is the Amazon Echo aka Alexa. Alexa is an artificially intelligent, voice assistant that can play music, read real-time updates on news, weather, to-do lists, and access the web for information on just about anything you ask about using nothing more than your voice. Voice assistants such as, Alexa along with Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri, are fast becoming common technology staples as laptops and tablets were before them. Just consider findings from a company named MindMeld, after they commissioned research on 1,800 adult smartphone users in the U.S., "The company found that there has been a big uptick in voice assistant and voice search usage, with 60 percent saying that they had started using these tools in the past 12 months," (SearchEngineLand). They go on to report that up to "55% of voice assistant users use assistants regularly (daily or weekly), indicating not only mainstream adoption, but also greater engagement of users with voice assistants," (PRNewswire).

What's perhaps even more interesting comes from today's tech heavyweight, Google. "Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that 20 percent of queries on its mobile app and on Android devices are voice searches. The range of virtual assistants, such as Siri, Cortana, Google Voice Search/Now, Viv, Amazon Alexa, and now, Google Home, are collectively training people to search using their voices and to become more 'conversational' with search and mobile devices. In addition, those queries will become more transactional over time as virtual assistants permit bookings and conversions using voice," (SearchEngineLand).


Alexa, To What Devices Can You Connect?

There's no shortage of smart tech that you can connect to modern voice assistants in order to start building an A.I. supportive and smart tech powered environment at home or in the office. The device works wonderfully with smart vacuums, fans, lighting, thermostats, security systems, outlets, robotic assistants, and even full home kits.


Alexa, What Is Your Potential?

The next big question is, how are are organizations using or planning to take advantage of devices like Alexa? In the case of companies like FinancialForce, business leaders are finding ways to use these devices to streamline business processes which would typically require a chain of common actions (e.g. access program, type username, type password, navigate through specific sections, review data) to get insights and execute work faster. "The potential for businesses of any size to have a digital assistant that can immediately find and report crucial information, as well as slicing and dicing the data according to user commands is incredibly exciting," said Chief Technology Officer of FinancialForce Andy Fawcett," (ITPro).

It will be interesting to see where this technology takes us. Regardless, one thing is clear. Smart technology is becoming more intelligent and growing in popularity. We may be on the cusp of a brave new digital wave.

Learn more via the USF Technology Blog anytime at https://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/is/.