IT contractors could soon benefit from a new piece of technology developed by Microsoft which enables machines to sleep while retaining their network access.

The system has been developed as a solution to the prevailing business network problem of idle machines often required to be accessible to other parts of the network all of the time.

However, developers also concluded following a trial rollout that the more widespread adoption of more cloud-based applications could necessitate "more specialised proxy reaction policies" for the system to be effective.

Testing revealed that energy saving was achievable, although this was largely dependent on IT management task interference.

Earlier this month, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts executive director of policy and research Stian Westlake indicated that technological innovation will have a key role to play in the UK economic recovery.

He said: "The kind of IT services, things like software development and even the design behind the high tech manufacturing – those things will all be very important."