By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch SAN FRANCISCO (MaketWatch) - Server sales related to cloud computing are expected to jump to $12.6 billion in the next five years, as more businesses embrace the era of automated and virtualized data centers. Server revenue for cloud computing in the public sector is projected to grow from $582 million in 2009 to $718 million in 2014, IDC said in a new report. Meanwhile server revenue for private sector cloud market is expected to grow from $7.3 billion to $11.8 billion in the same period, IDC said. Cloud computing enables companies to access computing power through a network, instead of in-house data centers which have become increasingly more expensive and complex to set up and maintain. Another emerging trend in the corporate IT market is virtualization in which businesses tap disparate computer systems on their premises or in a hosted data centers as one network and use that computing capacity based on needs. "Now is a great time for many IT organizations to begin seriously considering this technology and employing public and private clouds in order to simplify sprawling IT environments," IDC analyst Katherine Broderick said in a statement.

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