Updated: 2009-07-16

With so many companies part of the global marketplace it is becoming increasingly important for small businesses to implement unified communication (UC) to help keep information flowing - something that SaaS can help with.

A recent white paper from CommuniGate Systems finds that many small- and medium-sized businesses have shied away from UC because of the cost and technological support needed.

This is something Simon Paton, managing director of CommuniGate Systems UK says can be alleviated by implementing SaaS.

"Small and medium-sized businesses have been slower to embrace unified communications because of high costs and lack of technical skills," he said. "However, the unified communications SaaS model has matured rapidly, providing SMBs with a far more cost effective mechanism for deploying UC, avoiding the complexities of on-premise implementation, by in effect passing the buck to service providers."

A growing number of businesses both large and small are seeing the benefits of SaaS and cloud computing to decrease costs and make themselves more green.

A recent report from NetSuite found that cloud computing saves about 423,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year - the equivalent of 1 million barrels of oil.