Just two months after a successful trial run, it has been reported that WeWork and Amazon have halted their partnership to introduce Alexa for Business into their workspaces.
Alexa for Business is the company’s effort to tap into the business market instead of focusing solely on home consumers. At WeWork headquarters, Alexa for Business gave members an opportunity to use the voice assistant for workplace tasks such as reserving conference rooms, adjusting office temperatures, and more.
Technology provider Acumatica partnered with Amazon to create an app for Alexa for Business, but has yet to launch despite having been in the market for about a year a now, according to CNBC.
“People see voice as a viable interaction method at work,” said Acumatica VP of Platform Strategy Ajoy Krishnamoorthy. “But we need to build the confidence in the industry that technology like this can work with the right security — sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.”
Developers are still fine tuning the security and authorization side of the app, an important feature in almost all coworking spaces. Krishnamoorthy said that business applications require a certain set of authorizations built in, which could explain the hold up.
