The big idea that helped these two Seattle area volcanoes of tech to work together is that their two assistants are good at different things. Cortana integrates well with Microsoft Office and the Bing search engine. Alexa is good at almost everything else. This means that you will soon be able to say natural sounding phrases like, "Alexa, open Cortana. [pause] Hey Cortana, what's on my Outlook calendar for today?" All from the same speaker thingy sitting on some shelf in whatever room you are in.
Not clunky at all.
