I have three voice activated, virtual assistants at home:
- Google Home Max. It’s a pricey. Around $400 but my wife won it at a Google hackathon using Flutter. (so proud) It’s comparatively large and hefty but sounds great
- Apple HomePod. Beautiful, elegant, great sounding hardware, but Siri, hmmm… more below.
- Three Amazon Echos, various generations. Relatively inexpensive, and good-enough sound for their size
I am clearly not an audiophile, but anecdotally, which is the best? Based on how often ours get used at my home (wife, 2 young boys, a dog, and a beta fish) Amazon is the winner. I know Google has the depth and breadth to be very smart, but we just kept having too many misses and glitches. The Echo/Alexa was being called upon for jokes, stories, timers, information, and more importantly – music, even though the better sounding Google Home Max was in the same room. Perhaps being creatures of habit, we became accustomed to calling out to Alexa? First mover advantage? But then again, Siri had the first mover advantage on the iPhone, and was always available – but Siri’s abilities are clearly behind both Amazon and Google. It’s unfortunate as I really like the industrial design of the HomePod. I have noticed Siri getting smarter, perhaps since they poached one of the AI experts from Google. Unfortunately for Apple, Siri is still not competitive.
So what does any of this have to do with Oracle? I consider this the continued evolution of the consumerization of IT. No more AI science projects in the lab, this is the consumerization of AI for the enterprise. You may recall only a few years ago, the phrase "consumerization of IT" which, imho, was primarily driven by the introduction of the iPhone, back in 2007. With the iPhone, consumers fell in love with their smartphones at home and asked their IT departments to support them. Back in the day, Blackberries (aka crackberries) ruled the mobile enterprise. I recall back when I worked at Verisign/Symantec, IT resisted, due to security concerns, but eventually relented to this unstoppable trend. From my observation, enough executive influence (thanks Enrique) with iPhones and iPads, wanted support, and so – that’s the way IT rolls.
That brings me to AI interfaces in the enterprise, specifically our chatbot technology, Oracle Digital Assistant. A digital assistant is more than a simple chatbot. For details, check this excellent post by Eric Rogge delving into more depth on newly release features for Oracle Digital Assistant.
Noting the inevitable growth and popularity of conversational interfaces (text/voice) in the enterprise, this nascient market is full of solutions vying for your adoption. And as the market matures, most of which will simply go away or be acquired. Remember all the internet companies? The e-commerce companies? Mobile companies? It's darwinism at work.
Who survives and flourishes? I’ve alway felt that there are 3 things that make a product successful – inspired by the old real estate adage (location, location, location) – what makes a product successful is: easy, easy, and wait for it…easy! Remember plug-and-play? The product still has to work of course, but he who makes it easy to adopt, easy to use, easy to live with, usually wins. Why do you think UX experts and UI designers are in such high demand?
For Oracle Digital Assistant, the Oracle SaaS teams are working on easy, by building their own related digital assistant “skills" that plug and play with the Oracle Digital Assistant platform. Imagine a digital assistant skill for ERP, assistant for procurement, assistant for reports, an assistant for supply chain management, an assistant for HR, expense reports, whatever the customer needs are. Now imagine these assistants, readily available in a Skill Store, or Catalog – akin to the Apple AppStore or Google Play, easily available to add to your own Digital Assistant. Now make them so that they can be customized to your needs, easy. Provide the platform to manage their lifecycle – easy. Provide proven, serious enterprise security skills by default – easy. There you go.
TL;DR – Oracle Digital Assistant makes it easy to bring chatbot capabilities to your enterprise applications. Again, a great read is Eric Rogge’s recent blog post on this topic. https://blogs.oracle.com/mobile/oracle-digital-assistant-version-1843-introduces-skill-chatbot-capability
Want to chat in person? I’ll be chatting up chatbots at Oracle Cloud Day in New York next week, Jan 15. If you’re there, match this blog, and see me at the event, ping me and I’ll buy you an adult beverage of your choice. Even better, if you’re across the pond, in Europe, you should check out Oracle OpenWorld Europe, Jan 16-17, in London, and catch Suhas Uliyar’s must see presentations on this topic. Middle-east? OpenWorld Middle East, Feb 11-12, in Dubai. Asia? OpenWorld Asia, Mar 26-27, in Singapore. Can’t make any of these? Call you’re Oracle sales rep or partner. I’m sure they’d love to chat. No more excuses. cloud.oracle.com/digital-assistant
