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For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We ar

For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud transition across our core platforms in Healthcare and focusing on our AI-first approach in Enterprise. In Healthcare, we saw solid performance in our cloud-based offerings, growing cloud revenue 28% year-over-year. In particular, we benefited from strong performance in Dragon Medical & DAX Cloud revenue, which grew 22% year-over-year driven by the ongoing transition of our installed base to Dragon Medical One, as well as traction in international, ambulatory and community hospital markets. Enterprise delivered another record revenue quarter, up slightly from its previous record in Q1'20, driven by particularly strong demand for our Security & Biometrics solutions." Nuance has deep relationships built with nearly every health system in the US and beyond. This fits quite well with Microsoft's corporate focus. Yes, Nuance also has a lot of IP, but I wouldn't expect any consumer facing changes (e.g. Cortana) in the near term. [1] https://investors.nuance.com/download/EX%2099.1%20Press%20Release%20December%2031,%202020_FINAL.pdf https://investors.nuance.com/download/EX%2099.1%20Press%20Re...

tootie 5y ago
I'm pretty sure Nuance also does the Comcast Xfinity voice remotes. They are actually really well done. And it's a humongous customer to have your claws in.
- marktangotango 5y ago
  I have this and it really is quite remarkable. The entire voice integration in the x1 set top box is really polished. Other than the occasional "wow, this is pretty good for comcast!" I hadn't given it much thought until now.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Can you remove the ads from the EPG?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  It’s literally better than Siri. I don’t know how, but it is. I’d say it’s even better than Alexa in terms of its ability to recognize things I say.
  - jxramos 5y ago
    I think they've been at it for a pretty long time with old products like Dragon. A friend used to work there some years back and said they pretty much perfected speech detection up to some very reasonable error rate. I imagine they've just continued to cover all the dark corner cases and irregularities and accents etc.
    - pie420 5y ago
      No, the real challenge now is how do you minimize the amount of processing power needed, or bandwidth needed, and how do you do all this while minimizing translation time to under 0.5 seconds. Obviously accents and irregularities are also areas I'm sure they are focusing on, but I imagine that optimizing for real time, mobile and low CPU power devices is a huge focus for them.
      - geenew 5y ago
        They ran dragon on contemporary computers, and that was very good at least 10 years ago, probably more. So they have voice recognition working well on what would now be considered very constrained hardware.
        tootie 5y ago
        I had an early version of Dragon on Tandy running Windows 3.1. And it was pretty usable. Not just dictation it could imitate mouse clicks when you said stuff like "maximize window".
  - tootie 5y ago
    The biggest leg up they have is that their product works in a very controlled domain. Siri is out there trying to be a complete interactive AI human and failing miserably. The Xfinity remote just controls your TV and does it smashingly. I found the Alexa-driven voice control on my FireTV to also be a pleasant experience compared to regular Alexa.
- dkdk8283 5y ago
  Universal remote control makes all Comcast remotes.
- _cerv 5y ago
  They do. The amount of magic involved to make it work is amazing from an engineering perspective.
- nickfromseattle 5y ago
  Microsoft already has relationships with Comcast [0] and nearly every major telecommunication around the world. [0] https://cloudsolutions.comcast.com/apps/64168/office-365#!overview https://cloudsolutions.comcast.com/apps/64168/office-365#!ov... And 100% agreed, the voice is great on the Xfinity remote. Was very impressed.
samstave 5y ago
And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.
- srmarm 5y ago
  Yes / No
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>“free healthcare for all” There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    I'm curious who you think is actually out there laboring under the assumption that healthcare becomes absolutely, and literally, free?
    - fakedang 5y ago
      A lot of Europeans in the lower taxpaying tiers who love to shit on Americans (especially when the American healthcare system has been getting so much coverage the past decade).
      - haerra 5y ago
        Uhm, I guess that you have some inner frustrations, as I have yet to meet someone who thinks that healtcare is literally free.
        fakedang 5y ago
        If you're talking about people who for some reason don't understand European tax laws (which is a lot of people in the mainland and in the US), yeah I'm quite frustrated. My issue is with people who pay nil significant taxes in Europe gloating ignorantly about how European Healthcare is free, and won't stop shitting on American Healthcare. Yeah, your healthcare is cheaper than the US but it isn't free. There is a whole bunch of middle class folks and upper class folks paying for it. And I'm not even supporting the American model.
luke2m 5y ago
Yes, that makes sense
conanbatt 5y ago
Oh wow. The Dragon headset is a very strange product space. It is used by non-tech savvy doctors to avoid having to type into the EMR.
- riahi 5y ago
  It’s not just the non tech savvy. It’s substantially faster to dictate text than type it, especially if your hands are occupied with the computer doing something else (ie interpreting radiology exams, dictating a treatment course or visit note while simultaneously reviewing labs).
  - conanbatt 5y ago
    Only if no one reads the output.
jesseryoung 5y ago
I work in healthcare software and recently did a spike building a voice assistant for the EMR. We compared Google, AWS, Azure and Nuance's voice and intent recognition and Nuance blew all the others out of the water. When it comes to understanding medical terminology Nuance is way ahead of anything other providers have. Dragon has been around for 23 years and has been THE product for VR in the medical field for at least the last 10 years (from my experience).
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I think in a lot of cases that is because they tried. You can tell 90% of Google's focus is ad consumers when they develop new services, whereas Nuance has sold medical-focused dictation tools for over a decade.
- jonas21 5y ago
  Dragon's actually been around since 1982 (39 years). Sad story about the founders, Janet and Jim Baker, though. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and-a-sale-gone-horribly-awry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-an...
  - wombatmobile 5y ago
    The Bakers sued Goldman Sachs for negligence, intentional misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty, which in January 2013 led to a 23-day trial in Boston. The jury cleared Goldman Sachs of all charges. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/goldman-sachs-cleared-in-collapse-of-dragon-systems-sale.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/goldman-sachs-cl...
  - Ambix 5y ago
    Very sad story. Two pioneers of voice tech had literally nothing for their hard work.
- 2fast4you 5y ago
  Wow, did not know EMR voice assistant was a thing. Can’t wait till our team works on something like this
hbosch 5y ago
I worked years ago at a major cell phone mfg company, and we were comparing vendors (circa 2013-2014) for the voice recognition/transcription software. I remember two of the leading options were SoundHound (dba then as "Hound", which has since gone to market as a voice solution[0]) and Nuance which was a company not many of us had ever heard of. At the time, Hound actually was very very good at language recognition and impressed everyone quite a bit. Compared to Nuance, the experience of conversing with Hound was better as I remember. However, Nuance had the edge in language support... while Hound was great for Western dialects of English, and some others, Nuance supported Mandarin. End of the day it was no contest which product we had to go with. I'm not surprised that Nuance had continued to be an industry leader all these years. ... 0. https://www.soundhound.com/hound https://www.soundhound.com/hound
spoonjim 5y ago
Forum crowds will look to the tech but this is bang on, CEOs are ultimately coin operated and any company would salivate to get their hands on a vendor that is so deeply burrowed into the operations of the healthcare industry.

tootie 5y ago

I'm pretty sure Nuance also does the Comcast Xfinity voice remotes. They are actually really well done. And it's a humongous customer to have your claws in.

marktangotango 5y ago
I have this and it really is quite remarkable. The entire voice integration in the x1 set top box is really polished. Other than the occasional "wow, this is pretty good for comcast!" I hadn't given it much thought until now.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Can you remove the ads from the EPG?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ryanSrich 5y ago
It’s literally better than Siri. I don’t know how, but it is. I’d say it’s even better than Alexa in terms of its ability to recognize things I say.
- jxramos 5y ago
  I think they've been at it for a pretty long time with old products like Dragon. A friend used to work there some years back and said they pretty much perfected speech detection up to some very reasonable error rate. I imagine they've just continued to cover all the dark corner cases and irregularities and accents etc.
  - pie420 5y ago
    No, the real challenge now is how do you minimize the amount of processing power needed, or bandwidth needed, and how do you do all this while minimizing translation time to under 0.5 seconds. Obviously accents and irregularities are also areas I'm sure they are focusing on, but I imagine that optimizing for real time, mobile and low CPU power devices is a huge focus for them.
    - geenew 5y ago
      They ran dragon on contemporary computers, and that was very good at least 10 years ago, probably more. So they have voice recognition working well on what would now be considered very constrained hardware.
      - tootie 5y ago
        I had an early version of Dragon on Tandy running Windows 3.1. And it was pretty usable. Not just dictation it could imitate mouse clicks when you said stuff like "maximize window".
- tootie 5y ago
  The biggest leg up they have is that their product works in a very controlled domain. Siri is out there trying to be a complete interactive AI human and failing miserably. The Xfinity remote just controls your TV and does it smashingly. I found the Alexa-driven voice control on my FireTV to also be a pleasant experience compared to regular Alexa.
dkdk8283 5y ago
Universal remote control makes all Comcast remotes.
_cerv 5y ago
They do. The amount of magic involved to make it work is amazing from an engineering perspective.
nickfromseattle 5y ago
Microsoft already has relationships with Comcast [0] and nearly every major telecommunication around the world. [0] https://cloudsolutions.comcast.com/apps/64168/office-365#!overview https://cloudsolutions.comcast.com/apps/64168/office-365#!ov... And 100% agreed, the voice is great on the Xfinity remote. Was very impressed.

samstave 5y ago

And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.

srmarm 5y ago
Yes / No
ejb999 5y ago
>>“free healthcare for all” There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  I'm curious who you think is actually out there laboring under the assumption that healthcare becomes absolutely, and literally, free?
  - fakedang 5y ago
    A lot of Europeans in the lower taxpaying tiers who love to shit on Americans (especially when the American healthcare system has been getting so much coverage the past decade).
    - haerra 5y ago
      Uhm, I guess that you have some inner frustrations, as I have yet to meet someone who thinks that healtcare is literally free.
      - fakedang 5y ago
        If you're talking about people who for some reason don't understand European tax laws (which is a lot of people in the mainland and in the US), yeah I'm quite frustrated. My issue is with people who pay nil significant taxes in Europe gloating ignorantly about how European Healthcare is free, and won't stop shitting on American Healthcare. Yeah, your healthcare is cheaper than the US but it isn't free. There is a whole bunch of middle class folks and upper class folks paying for it. And I'm not even supporting the American model.

luke2m 5y ago

Yes, that makes sense

conanbatt 5y ago

Oh wow. The Dragon headset is a very strange product space. It is used by non-tech savvy doctors to avoid having to type into the EMR.

riahi 5y ago
It’s not just the non tech savvy. It’s substantially faster to dictate text than type it, especially if your hands are occupied with the computer doing something else (ie interpreting radiology exams, dictating a treatment course or visit note while simultaneously reviewing labs).
- conanbatt 5y ago
  Only if no one reads the output.

jesseryoung 5y ago

I work in healthcare software and recently did a spike building a voice assistant for the EMR. We compared Google, AWS, Azure and Nuance's voice and intent recognition and Nuance blew all the others out of the water. When it comes to understanding medical terminology Nuance is way ahead of anything other providers have. Dragon has been around for 23 years and has been THE product for VR in the medical field for at least the last 10 years (from my experience).

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I think in a lot of cases that is because they tried. You can tell 90% of Google's focus is ad consumers when they develop new services, whereas Nuance has sold medical-focused dictation tools for over a decade.
jonas21 5y ago
Dragon's actually been around since 1982 (39 years). Sad story about the founders, Janet and Jim Baker, though. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and-a-sale-gone-horribly-awry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-an...
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  The Bakers sued Goldman Sachs for negligence, intentional misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty, which in January 2013 led to a 23-day trial in Boston. The jury cleared Goldman Sachs of all charges. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/goldman-sachs-cleared-in-collapse-of-dragon-systems-sale.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/business/goldman-sachs-cl...
- Ambix 5y ago
  Very sad story. Two pioneers of voice tech had literally nothing for their hard work.
2fast4you 5y ago
Wow, did not know EMR voice assistant was a thing. Can’t wait till our team works on something like this

hbosch 5y ago

I worked years ago at a major cell phone mfg company, and we were comparing vendors (circa 2013-2014) for the voice recognition/transcription software. I remember two of the leading options were SoundHound (dba then as "Hound", which has since gone to market as a voice solution[0]) and Nuance which was a company not many of us had ever heard of. At the time, Hound actually was very very good at language recognition and impressed everyone quite a bit. Compared to Nuance, the experience of conversing with Hound was better as I remember. However, Nuance had the edge in language support... while Hound was great for Western dialects of English, and some others, Nuance supported Mandarin. End of the day it was no contest which product we had to go with. I'm not surprised that Nuance had continued to be an industry leader all these years. ... 0. https://www.soundhound.com/hound https://www.soundhound.com/hound

spoonjim 5y ago

Forum crowds will look to the tech but this is bang on, CEOs are ultimately coin operated and any company would salivate to get their hands on a vendor that is so deeply burrowed into the operations of the healthcare industry.