Cortana

One of the new features of Windows 10 is Cortana. A familiar entity from those who played the Halo^TM game series, Cortana is more than a pretty face in Windows 10. It is deeply embedded into the operating system, and application developers can very easily integrate into the voice controls of Cortana to launch or manage their applications. Two examples of Cortana at work are shown in the following screenshots:

  

For enterprise environments, Azure AD is leveraged to manage some of their behaviors, and therefore, enterprises using Azure AD should really investigate the capabilities of Cortana. Strong integration with Office 365 and Power BI are two compelling use cases Microsoft supports now. The addition of the Microsoft Bots SDK and Cortana skills kit make this a customizable platform for enterprises to leverage for their own internal applications.

We're not simply talking to a computer, although that is part of what Cortana does for users. Imagine integration with Cortana Analytics on Azure, Power BI dashboards, and Excel pivot tables all integrated together and results available via a simple-to-use interface built into Windows 10. That's more a fit for what the vision and capabilities are here.

Also look for more integration stunts with Microsoft's Office suite and other products and services coming in the future.