Technet: Daily Crunch - Microsoft acquires Nuance for $19.7B

The big story: Microsoft acquires Nuance for $19.7B

Microsoft announced this morning that it’s acquiring speech-to-text company Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion. It seems like the real focus here is on healthcare — Microsoft announced a Cloud for Healthcare last year, while Nuance’s industry products include Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe One for radiology reporting.

"Today's acquisition announcement represents the latest step in Microsoft's industry-specific cloud strategy,” the company said in a blog post.

Analysts told us that this could help Microsoft fill in crucial gaps when it comes to both speech recognition and health data.

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