Writing in the company bog, Vole said that the move was about increasing its presence in the healthcare vertical, a place where Nuance has done well in recent years.

In fact, the company announced the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare last year, and this deal is about accelerating its presence in that area.

Nuance's products in this area 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 wrote.

The acquisition also builds on several integrations and partnerships the two companies have made in the last couple of years. The company boasts 10,000 healthcare customers, according to information on the website.

Those include AthenaHealth, Johns Hopkins, Mass General Brigham and Cleveland Clinic to name but a few, and it was that customer base that attracted Microsoft to pay the price it did to bring Nuance into the fold.