Voice technology is one of many new developments transforming computing and changing the way brands do business, both internally and with customers. This new tool is designed to streamline communications at the enterprise level and facilitate simpler interactions with consumers, but its experimental aspects provide challenges to businesses interested in the new technology.

This gap in understanding provides innovation opportunities for companies like iOLAP Inc., a traditional analytics and big data data warehousing organization and Amazon Web Services Inc. partner.

“Two years ago when Alexa came out we … immediately put it in our innovation lab and started trying to figure out how we could we use it in an enterprise setting,” said Chris Jordan (pictured), chief executive officer of iOLAP.

Jordan spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), principal at The CTO Advisor, during the recent AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed the potential impact of voice technology on enterprises and how iOLAP and AWS are partnering to streamline the integration process for customers.

Overcoming voice tech for business roadblocks

When iOLAP embarked on its work of incorporating voice tech into customer processes, it initially discovered roadblocks that posed challenges to Alexa working in the enterprise environment. The first challenge was that of user authentication in a public workplace environment.

“If you’ve got an Alexa device sitting in a room, anybody that comes in and asks a question is going to get the answer. … You can’t have that in an enterprise setting,” Jordan said.

To resolve this issue, iOLAP developed an authentication method based on active directory integration built into the platform to enable access control for appropriate users.

Built historically as individual consumer products, the team also discovered issues around device management at scale. Creating an enterprise process meant deploying hundreds or thousands of devices across an entire business, so Jordan and his team built in applications to interact on phones or through chatbot-like interfaces to enable more widespread use.

“We’re … taking our years of domain experience and innovating with our clients to come up with personas and use cases and really develop those voice applications that become almost like another interface into all of the enterprise systems that they’ve already built,” Jordan said.

For companies looking to adopt voice technology into their processes, Jordan is adamant that the best way to make discoveries is to simply “jump in.”

“Start playing with voice, and see how it changes the way you interact with your systems,” he said.

The more iOLAP customers inquire about new avenues for the technology, the more the company is encouraged to innovate with AWS. With its consistent growth pace, Jordan is confident AWS will continue to push iOLAP to evolve further, faster.

“We had our first proof of concept up and running within three months. We couldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for the platform and service that AWS had already built,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent.

Photo: SiliconANGLE