Avaya has acquired US-based Traverse Networks for $US15 million in a deal that gives it software for managing applications and voicemail on mobile devices.

The Traverse software allowed users to see and hear office voice mail through an email-like in-box in a mobile device so they could sort through various messages to find important ones, vice-president of unified communications at Avaya, Eileen Rudden, said.

The software reduces the need to dial a number for access, simplifying the voice-mail retrieval process.

Avaya also announced a family of four product groups for unified communications software. A customer would be able to pick a group of applications that could save them an average of 30 per cent over the cost of buying the applications individually, Rudden said.

The four groupings build upon one another, starting with Unified Communications Essential Edition, which is intended for office users needing advanced IP telephony, voice mail and basic conferencing capability. The next level up, Unified Communications Standard Edition, adds advanced mobility tools from Traverse to take applications to users' mobile devices. The third level up is Unified Communications Advanced Edition, which adds conferencing for teams larger than six people and whiteboarding. The top tier, Unified Communications Professional Edition, adds video communications and speech-recognition software, including videoconferencing and voice-driven access to messages and other applications.

The top tier might be used by the highest-level employees in an organisation, Rudden said. The various editions will be available in the first half of 2007.

An analyst at Wainhouse Research, Brent Kelly, said the four groupings of software helped organise an array of products that clarified what customers would get.

The move followed Avaya's steps to organise its unified communications software under a single director and follows efforts by Cisco Systems and Microsoft to market a separate category of unified communications products, he said.