Cisco has announced the acquisition of Orative for approximately $31 million.

Orative, a privately held San Jose-based firm with 33 employees, develops software to help mobile phones connect with PC-based telephony systems.

“The Orative acquisition will allow Cisco to further deliver on its promise of extending the Unified Communications experience from the network services to mobile devices,” said Don Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco’s voice technology group.

Cisco plans to integrate Orative’s technology into a mobile client for its Unified Communications programme, which offers businesses the ability to integrate voice, data, and videoconferencing systems.

“A lot of the things that we have on our desktop client will be available on a cell phone,” Alex Hadden-Boyd, Cisco’s director of mobile unified communications, told vnunet.com.

Among the features Cisco plans to make available for mobile phones are IP telephony, reminders, visual info about voicemail, click-to-download, and the ability to join meetings.

“We’ve seen already what Blackberry has done for pushmail, and we think this is going to help Cisco do the same thing for Unified Communication,” said Hadden-Boyd.

Cisco said it expects the acquisition to close by January.