"More flexibility on this side of things will be very appealing and will be a real selling feature."

However, Haslam believes that SMEs are still very protective of production environments, largely due to regulatory constraints.

He said: "This is an evolution and it is still relatively days. It is no different for the existing cloud providers - if you look at it as a whole, the proportion of test versus production in the cloud is skewed towards test. It's the natural first step.

"However, there is undoubtedly going to be strong interest in Oracle's cloud, because there is going to be a different in having a cloud that is Oracle recognised."

Also at Oracle OpenWorld, a BT boss said that about whether companies should be looking to commodity-based computing for public cloud offerings or highly engineered systems. Derek Wilson, managing director for Global Platforms, BT Innovate & Design, compared the benefits of Oracle's highly engineered public cloud to Amazon Web Service's commodity service.