FAFCO, the oldest and largest solar thermal manufacturer in the United States, deployed the MaxMobile unified communications application from AltiGen, a provider of 100 percent Microsoft (News - Alert)-based VoIP business phone systems and Unified Communications solutions.

FAFCO provides domestic solar hot water systems and has earned nearly 30 U.S. Patents and recently worked with the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory to design a lightweight affordable solar heating system for the household water.

With the MaxMobile app, FAFCO’s sales, service and executive teams can work anywhere, anytime exactly as if they were in the office. Some of the benefits MaxMobile is going to offer the company are: extend the business features to smartphone devices; integrate the mobile workforce and eliminate the need for a desktop phone.

AltiGen (News - Alert) claimed that the MaxMobile is the industry’s first true mobile PBX solution that provides a suite of applications to extend complete business PBX functionality to smartphone devices. Unlike the first generation products which used a low level Web client, MaxMobile applications were designed to natively run on each of the popular smartphone platforms taking full advantage of their respective capabilities with a familiar, intuitive user interface.

Officials with FAFCO claimed that the thermal manufacturer always fostered an internal culture of innovation. When it wanted to upgrade its communications capabilities, it was looking for a software based solution that would leverage its existing investment in BlackBerry, Google (News - Alert) Droid and iPhone smart phones.

The goal was to provide complete business phone functionality over a variety of mobile phones, the company said. AltiGen's MaxMobile application was a perfect fit because it was easy to deploy and provides great functionality for FAFCO employees.

"AltiGen's mobility software extends PBX (News - Alert) functionality and call control to the full or part time mobile user," said AltiGen Vice President of Sales, Mike Plumer. "It may be implemented as an integrated part of AltiGen's Unified Communication's solution or adjunct to an existing PBX. We are also providing native integration to Microsoft's Lync solution for companies planning to move away from legacy, hardware based solutions."

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