What Amazon Echo tells us about the future of enterprise IT

I recently bought an Amazon Echo to "experiment with developments on the frontier of technology to see what the future of IT holds for us." Playing around with the device--a hands-free speaker you control with your voice--got me thinking about the role that vocal computing might play in enterprise IT going forward. Vocal computing is not appropriate for every interaction, but it is seductively convenient for certain interactions. For example, it works beautifully to connect Echo and the Alexa Voice Service to play music, or to provide information such as news and weather. And I was pleasantly surprised by Alexa's quality of vocal interpretation.