The increasing corporate use of cloud computing services will drag down revenue growth for information technology hardware and software suppliers, says Barclays in its 2014 global technology outlook.

“’We believe the deflationary impact from the cloud ($1 spent on cloud infrastructure actually results in several dollars coming out of other IT end markets) should prevent IT spending from growing meaningfully in 2014 and 2015,’ said the Barclays report. ‘We believe global IT spending will remain challenged in the lower single-digit growth range,” the report said.

There will be those who gain from the use of cloud, and those who will be clear losers.

The report stated that they expect hardware and server players like EMC (EMC) and IBM (IBM) to be particularly challenged, while system integrators like Accenture (ACN) may also struggle with the need for less on-premise integration, as their customers rely more on (cloud) architectures.

This will become more of an issue as we move through 2014, when it becomes clear that quarter-on-quarter growth is just not there for the larger enterprise hardware and software providers.  While they would argue that they are moving into the cloud as well, they will do so with reduced margins.  Moreover, they will cannibalize their existing hardware and software business.  It’s a bit of a “Catch 22.”