Amazon last month quietly updated its smart voice assistant Alexa to support the Outlook.com calendar for Microsoft’s Office 365. It’s been supporting Google Calendar from the beginning, but this marks Amazon Alexa’s first attempt to enter the enterprise space by piggybacking on Office 365.
Users of Amazon Echo and other Alexa-capable devices will now be able to add events to the calendar or just ask Alexa about their scheduled events on their Outlook.com calendar.
No update is required to the device itself; users can simply go to their iOS or Android app for Alexa or on the web, and go to Settings -> Calendar to integrate Alexa with Office 365’s native calendar.
Amazon has been making a lot of silent moves into the enterprise space, and with multiple products. As reported by 1redDrop.com, Amazon now has a relatively robust office collaboration and productivity offering via Amazon Chime, Workmail and Workdocs.
However, it is significant that Amazon has recognized Microsoft’s dominance in this area, and chose to support it instead of going against it on the Office 365 front.
With Office 365’s Outlook.com now being supported by Amazon Alexa, it will mutually help both services expand to more enterprise users than ever before. In a sense, Amazon has effectively used a cloud rival’s strength to pursue its own IoT agenda with Amazon Alexa at the center.
It’s a very smart move, in our opinion, and we will continue to watch how Amazon tiptoes its way into the enterprise software solutions space from several angles.
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