An expert has advised companies to consider how to minimise the disruption severe weather can cause and suggested they deploy cloud computing, which could create demand for IT contractors.

Rob Lovell, chief executive officer at ThinkGrid, claimed that almost every firm in the UK has been affected in some way by the heavy snow and so could benefit from considering how to minimise a similar threat in future.

The key solution he proposes to this problem is to move office-based services into the cloud, where employees can access these from off the premises.

He said: "People are quite short-term focused, so typically it's things like business continuity and disaster recovery that do get overlooked."

Mr Lovell suggested that those companies which are ahead of the curve will be firms that realise the benefits of cloud computing, IT contractors specialised in this area may be interested to discover.

Recent research by law firm Peninsula found that 44 per cent of workers stayed at home on January 6th due to the snow.