Javier Soltero, head honcho of Microsoft's Cortana business, has stepped down. The move comes less than two months after Soltero took to the stage at Ignite to push the tech at businesses. Having singularly failed to capture the hearts and minds of consumers, the new strategy involved persuading enterprises that Cortana's personal assistant chops could be put to work filing reports and other "company-specific" tasks. Alas, it does not appear that Cortana's current daddy is going to be hanging around long enough to see those efforts come to fruition, according to a tweet last night. The past 4 years have been an incredible experience.

A company spokesman said Mr. Soltero will remain with Microsoft through the end of the year. After Microsoft acquired Acompli, it quickly promoted Mr. Soltero. Within eight months, the company named him leader of Outlook, its widely used email application. A year-and-a-half later, Microsoft put Mr. Soltero in charge of strategy for the Office suite of products that include Outlook as well as the Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation applications. In March, the company moved Mr. Soltero to lead one of its most challenging businesses: its digital voice assistant, Cortana.

Javier Soltero, who briefly led the development of Microsoft's Cortana digital assistant, plans to leave the company, Soltero confirmed on Tuesday. Soltero confirmed his decision via Twitter after ZDNet reported the story earlier on Tuesday. Microsoft representatives had not previously responded to requests for comment, but confirmed his departure after Soltero's Twitter message. "I've made the decision to leave Microsoft," Soltero wrote. "The past 4 years have been an incredible experience.

Cortana's role at Microsoft is evolving (who'd have thought Alexa and Cortana would play nicely?), and the team in charge of the AI assistant looks to be changing as well. ZDNet sources claim that Microsoft's Corporate VP of Cortana, Javier Soltero, is leaving by the end of 2018. The executive, who came to Microsoft when it bought mail startup Accompli in 2014, reportedly plans to return to entrepreneurial pursuits. We've asked Microsoft if it can confirm the departure. If accurate, Soltero's exit could be a sign of how Microsoft will handle Cortana going forward.

Microsoft and Amazon will bring Alexa and Cortana to all Echo speakers and Windows 10 users in the U.S. today. As part of a partnership between the Seattle-area tech giants, you can say "Hey Cortana, open Alexa" to Windows 10 PCs and "Alexa, open Cortana" to a range of Echo smart speakers. The public preview bringing the most popular AI assistant on PCs together with the smart speaker with the largest U.S. market share will be available to most people today but will be rolled out to all users in the country over the course of the next week, a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. Each of the assistants brings unique features to the table. Cortana, for example, can schedule a meeting with Outlook, create location-based reminders, or draw on LinkedIn to tell you about people in your next meeting.

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 1.24% introduced its Alexa digital assistant seven months after Cortana's launch, but its Echo and sibling devices now control two-thirds of the U.S. smart-speaker market, according to research firm eMarketer. The market share of devices using Cortana isn't large enough to be listed in eMarketer's tally. Microsoft's effort to turn Cortana into a viable competitor, while voice computing is still in its early days, is bigger than just the market for smart speakers that sit on kitchen counters checking the weather. It is an opportunity to lead in the next big advance in computing, in which people use their voices rather than a keyboard and mouse. Companies that master so-called conversational computing will have an edge in the emerging business just as Windows gave Microsoft an advantage in the PC era, analysts say.

That's what PCWorld wanted to know when we spoke with Microsoft's recently-minted Cortana czar, Javier Soltero, late last week. The digital assistant who made a splash in Windows 10 with her snappy comebacks and silly knock-knock jokes is still offering to help you with your calendar and search. But Cortana hasn't talked her way into our homes like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have, making her staying power look uncertain. That's where Soltero comes in. We sat down with Cortana's new chief in the wake of a significant management shakeup that will see senior executive Terry Myerson leave, as well as the creation of a new "Experiences and Devices" team that seemingly downplays Windows.