IT contractors may find that moving from the public to the private sector can be more difficult than expected.

This is the view of Maggie Berry, managing director of womenintechnology.co.uk, who believes that there will be "swathes of cuts" in the public sector as the government continues its austerity drive.

The skills used in the public sector can be different those used in private firms, Ms Berry claims, and understanding exactly how these skills transfer to the corporate world could be a problem for IT contractors.

"Just the general environment and I guess the nature of [the work] - suddenly it becomes about profit rather than actually just about service," she said.

According to a new report from cloud services provider VMware, the UK public sector has to find some £3.6 billion in savings from its annual IT budget in order to meet government targets by 2013, something which will undoubtedly see fewer opportunities for IT contractors.