Cisco acquires Orative for $31 million

Cisco Systems continued its buying spree by announcing Thursday it will acquire privately held mobile telephony software company Orative for $31 million in cash.

Orative, of San Jose, California, develops conferencing and collaboration software for mobile business users, and integrates those tools with users’ existing communications systems.

Cisco expects the transaction to close in the second quarter of its 2007 fiscal year.

This is Cisco’s fourth acquisition in recent months. In August, Cisco paid $50 million for 80 percent of datacenter software developer Nuova Systems, and $92 million to acquire on-demand video company Arroyo Video Systems. In July, it bought security software vendor Meetinghouse for $43.7 million.