We are all familiar with Alexa, Google and Siri however there is another and often forgotten voice assistant that is not quite as common – Cortana from Microsoft.

Today Microsoft announced a simple yet clever move – enabling IFTTT support with their voice assistant. This opens a vast selection of smart home tech to Cortana.

Currently IFTTT has over 600 services on their platform. It was released in 2010 with the vision of ‘making the internet do all the work for you’, in other words automate life.

IFTTT stands for If This Then That and allows you to easily connect any enabled tech with simple commands and no experience of programming. It also has a vast selection of pre-build applets that require minimal or no setup to use.

In October 2017 Microsoft announced Cortana’s compatibility with Samsung SmartThings, Nest, Philips Hue, Wink, and Insteon. Today’s announcement again shows their aim to integrate as many solutions and options as possible.

Watch out Alexa, Google and Siri – Cortana has not given up yet!

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Wow! Just today we said this was a fast moving industry, with Amazon’s multi-room music announcement. Less than a few hours later Microsoft made this announcement.

You can buy Amazon Echo products from Amazon directly for under £50.

Cortana, Microsofts yet to become popular, voice assistant has created a world first integration between Cortana and Alexa!

The collaboration will be available later this year and will allow users to access Alexa via Microsoft Cortana. Likewise you will also be able to access Cortana via Alexa-enabled devices.

Microsoft commented

“Ensuring Cortana is available for our customers everywhere and across any device is a key priority for us. Bringing Cortana’s knowledge, Office 365 integration, commitments and reminders to Alexa is a great step toward that goal.”

Once enabled Microsoft Cortana users will be able to for example shop on Amazon by simply asking Cortana to open Alexa, as well as use any enabled Alexa Skill. Alexa users will be able to, for example, access Cortana’s Office 365 diary.

This is a very positive step and something we didn’t see coming!

It seems the smart home market is really evolving, the separations disappearing and the biggest winner is the user. Next move to Apple let’s see if Siri decides to make friends..

PS. You can buy Amazon Echo products from Amazon directly for under £50.

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Microsoft is partnering with the company that made the first ever electrical thermostat Johnson Controls to make a smart home thermostat. It will be called the slightly ugly ‘GLAS thermostat’.

The thermostat will have a translucent touch screen and looks stylish, you can tell they are trying to compete with Nests stylish looks.

At the heart of the device will be Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana, its version of Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri.

The initial market for the thermostat appears to be commercial, however as Microsoft announced earlier in the year the development of Cortana in home tech we expect it to be released for domestic use as well.

We have emailed Microsoft for a comment about the UK and home use – follow us for an update.

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Ahead of Microsofts Build conference this week, Microsoft and Harman Kardon today announced Invoke the Cortana powered speaker. 

Cortana is Microsofts virtual assistant, previously only found in windows and select phone handsets. 

Microsoft and Harman Kardon announce Invoke

Invoke will allow you to control your home tech as well as play music via voice commands. As yet no information on the supported integrations.

Visually similar to the Amazon Echo, aside from a thinner top that can be rotated – adding a tactile element to the cold design. Invoke will be available in black and silver. 

Harman Kardon has an impressive audio pedigree, something that stands out from the current competitors; Google home and Amazon Echo. Hopefully resulting in impressive audio as well as smart control. However with Sonos confirming development of a Alexa integrated speaker, Microsoft might not be the only smart solution that sounds superb in the not so distant future.

Invoke will be released Q4 2017.

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