Secure cross-platform hybrid mobile enterprise voice agent

Abstract

Voice is a very compelling natural interface for mobile computing devices. However, mobile operating system speech solutions (e.g., Siri, Google Voice Search) are platform-specific, making their integration within an enterprise environment difficult due to the lack of uniformity in the user experience as well as concerns over privacy and confidentiality. Hybrid apps can overcome these enterprise-specific challenges by allowing for fast deployment of functionality that is accessible across mobile platforms and enabling secure containerization of resources. But such hybrid apps often encounter significant performance slowdown due to the overheads associated with cross-platform compatibility and security. In this paper, we introduce a new secure mobile voice agent for enterprise voice interface applications on mobile devices that overcomes these issues. The proposed voice agent architecture enables confidentiality, enterprise integration, good cross-platform performance, and easy portability to multiple mobile platforms (such as Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry). Our approach avoids the need to manage multiple native speech engines across mobile OS platforms, reducing the time to deploy cross-platform voice interface solutions, and ensuring a cohesive user experience. In addition to describing the architecture and design of our mobile voice agent, we also provide a comparative analysis of its performance on various contemporary mobile computing platforms.