Amazon Plans to Send Alexa to the Office

Inc. AMZN -2.71% wants workers to ask its virtual assistant Alexa to book conference rooms and launch meetings, as the company races against rivals to make the office the next major inroad for voice-recognition devices. Amazon has built a wide lead in the field with its popular at-home Echo speaker, which launched in late 2014. The company is now counting on its new service, dubbed Alexa for Business and available immediately, to spark a surge in voice computing in the workplace. The online retail giant plans to announce the initiative here Thursday at its annual conference for its Amazon Web Services cloud-computing unit. Even before Amazon made a push into business, RBC Capital Markets predicted that by 2020, Alexa device installations could reach 128 million.