IT contractors may see an increase in the number of firms looking for help moving their data storage to a cloud computing operator.

According to the European Software-as-a-Service and cloud services research manager at the International Data Corporation David Bradshaw, private cloud computing is currently too costly.

In addition to being too much expense during difficult economic times, installation of the systems and implementation of the processes is too costly for many firms to bother with.

However, Mr Bradshaw suggests that competition from public cloud services will force private vendors to make the whole process cheaper and more streamlined.

"I'm expecting the applications vendors to make what they build much easier and simpler to deploy and virtualise," he said.

Server revenue for the private cloud market will grow from $7.3 billion (£4.8 billion) in 2009 to $11.8 billion (£7.7 billion) in 2014, research published in May by the IDC found.