Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, announced a tie-up with Xiaoi Robot, a global intelligent robot technology provider and platform operator, to develop and promote enterprise communications applications in China covering unified communications, contact center and cloud computing.

The two companies unveiled a new application, Avaya Elite UC iAssistant, which brings "speech control" into unified communications and helps enterprise to further enhance team engagement.

i-Assistant integrates speech recognition with enterprise communications, so that people don't have to press phone buttons any more to initiate calls or conferences.

Speech is the natural and effortless way of communication. Avaya i-Assistant represents a new and highly user-friendly way for collaboration and communication, and hence further enhances team engagement.

"Unified communications faces new challenges and opportunities with the development of communications technologies", said Adam Xiong, vice-president of Avaya Greater China.

"Avaya endeavors to develop applications and solutions that cater to the needs of local customers. Our collaboration with Xiaoi is part of this effort", Xiong added.

Avaya and Xiaoi also plan to develop intelligent voice navigation solutions and cloud products.