The Western European private cloud market will grow at a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.2% during next few years to $7.9bn in 2016, according to a new study from International Data Corporation (IDC).

The report revealed that cloud adoption is still in early phases in most enterprises that are typically testing it and rolling out one or a few cloud services to relevant users, but not deploying cloud on a large scale.

Pre-packaged private clouds, pre-configured with servers, storage, network and management that speed up implementation and reduce need for services are attracting market interest.

IDC European Services research director Mette Ahorlu said the growth of private cloud is even more impressive in the context of the parlous economic situation.

"It’s driven by the need for cost savings and efficiency and with a longer perspective of creating increased flexibility, and is across the board — from hardware, to software, to management, networking and services. Creating a private cloud has an impact on all aspects of IT infrastructure," Ahorlu said.

IDC said security, compliance and data location are barriers to public cloud, but become drivers for the adoption of the private cloud.

Hosted private cloud is not almost as popular as clouds on customers’ premises, though hosted private cloud will soar even faster and revenue will exceed on-premises clouds by 2016, the research revealed.

Meanwhile, telecom providers have also seen the market as a great opportunity to expand their businesses, while it is serviced by traditional IT providers and outsourcing companies.

IDC noted cloud is fundamentally a network-based offering as it commoditizes well and scales to a mass market customer base, and builds on the kind of support and billing relationships that telcos are used to.

The study, Western European Dedicated Private Cloud. Hardware, Software, Networking and Services, looked at all components going into building private clouds by enterprises and service providers, offering private clouds as a service, and managing and accessing private clouds.

It also offered user requirements, recommendations for end-users and vendors, market size, and forecast information for servers, storage hardware and software, networking equipment and IT services for 2011 to 2016.