Amazon Echo / Dot and Sonos Integration

Great sentiment but it is incompatible with some of Sonos' most entrenched policies such as forcing people to use the latest firmware to maintain support while failing to acknowledge the unintended consequences of changing or deprecating certain features. The Contol4 situation is an early indication that Sonos does not currently have the mindset needed to successfully maintain deep integration commitments. I wonder if they will really be able to embrace the level of change required to pull this off?

Oh jeez.

Time for a new tune.

Wow, great announcement! Predictably, it took only minutes for the whining to commence, lol.

You call it whining, I call it speculation. Taking everything at face value makes for pretty dull discussion.

Well, SONOS new CEO had a front row seat for the rise and fall of BlackBerry. He wasn't in charge, but he was high enough up the food chain to see the mistakes being made. It would be interesting to know what his views were at the time on RIM's strategy. Since he jumped ship to SONOS in '12, I'm guessing he was not a fan of the direction RIM had been heading. He has to be thinking that Alexa and the Echo/Dot look to SONOS a whole lot like the iPhone looked to BlackBerry. BlackBerry failed to pivot as people completely changed how they used their phone. I doubt he will make a similar mistake with SONOS. Voice will completely change how most people use multi-room audio. He is going to force innovation at SONOS to keep up with this change or be fired trying - count on it.

The Contol4 situation is an early indication that Sonos does not currently have the mindset needed to successfully maintain deep integration commitments. I wonder if they will really be able to embrace the level of change required to pull this off?

Did the switch get flipped with the new CEO or do they sill not have any #$@ to give?

Based on the leaked memo, I'd say the switch is flipped. From the memo:

"We must challenge ourselves to stay ahead of the curve. Being great doesn’t always require being first, but when it comes to the home music experience, we must be the pioneer. More companies are jumping into our space because they see the big opportunity ahead. What got us here won’t alone get us through the next phase."
"First, we must have a bias towards action."
"Second, we must innovate boldly."

I'm sensing a theme toward moving more quickly.

Hopefully innovating boldly yields some awesome new products and features (not just Alexa or HDMI on playbar etc)

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the content of these comments but then 'native integration' is a somewhat vague term.
My only interest is to be able to control sonos via voice commands to the Alexa service. This works in the US but not elsewhere (well actually, can be made to work in the UK but via a somewhat convoluted process). Personally, I can't see why Sonos would want to incorporate the puny Amazon speakers into their music service offering.

I do t understand why he keeps saying we are able to control Sonos via Alexa in US. That capability is being developed and available currently nowhere.

Must be one of those "alternative facts" we are getting all to often these days.

no news about this ?
when shall we see the beta ?

I don't recall that specific quote, but being involved with software development, as well as many betas, I've always taken that kind of marketing speak with a grain of salt. The simple fact is, at the beginning of a development process, they have an idea/plan as to when things will come together. However, also in software development, there's an adage, attributed to Field Marshall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf, that says "No battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy." It's as true in software as it is in war. And just because some wonk said X date doesn't mean that there's a 100% chance of them being correct. Sometimes software takes a turn for the "wha?", and it takes a while to work through the issues. I suspect just as soon as they are able, they'll start the beta. I really don't think that they're holding back anything, just to get a rise out of us. But I'm also fairly sure that "is it done yet" posts, over, and over, ad nauseam don't really provide anything useful, other than to irritate the folks who moderate (and read) these boards. And frankly, the engineers I work with don't take kindly to having their elbows joggled with "the customer wants it now!". They're busy trying to make it ready for the customer.

And I reject the nomination as hero. I'm just an experienced software development person, familiar with these types of situations.

[...] But the statement I've written is not a certain date. Beta was supposed to arrive at december 2016. Now nearly 3 months have passed. Of course, I am worried. Maybe they have dropped the project for some reason ?
So I would be very happy if some Sonos authorative person could take up the subject and inform their customers.

Here's a kind of official statement regarding Sonos Direct Control, however, drawing a parallel I'd say the beta will take place when both sides, Amazon & Sonos, are ready for action. Besides, didn't you just say "Developing such features is a very huge work […]"? So let them do their job.

Didn't someone here switch to HEOS because they were promised a Windows Phone app was in the works?

How's that working out for them? (Though they probably never actually switched. Nobody really does.)

Sonos doesn't give exact timetables for all the reasons you mentioned. Unlike some of their competitors, when they say they are doing something they do it.
To whom is this addressed? 😉