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AS OF 12/4/2008 12:48AM EST

Containing the E-Mail Explosion
By Jeff Feinman

August 21, 2008 — With no end in sight to the annual increases in e-mail usage and storage requirements, analysts and e-mail management companies say it is critical to know what is filling up employee inboxes. Doing so without trampling on employees’ privacy, however, can be a delicate dance.

E-mail usage is expected to grow by 25 to 40 percent annually for the next few years, according to the Radicati Group. Today, the average corporate user sends and receives approximately 156 e-mails per day; by 2012, that figure is expected to swell to 233 per day. The Radicati Group further estimates that the daily average e-mail storage requirement per corporate user will increase from 18.8MB this year to 28.8MB in 2012.

Reports from the trenches appear to confirm the trend. At Azaleos, which manages e-mail for Microsoft Exchange, CTO Keith McCall said customers’ e-mail storage grew 3 percent year over year in 2005 and 7 percent in 2006; last year, by contrast, Azaleos customers experienced 20 percent year-over-year e-mail storage growth. And McCall expects the tally to continue its upward trend.

To stem the tide, organizations should first analyze the types of e-mail flooding users’ inboxes, said Jesse Wilkins, principal consultant with Access Sciences, a Houston-based enterprise content and records management consulting firm. Much of the e-mail in a typical user’s box is what Wilkins called “Bacn”—newsletters, listserv messages and CCs that the user wants to read, but not at the moment the e-mail hits.

“If individual users and organizations just looked at those things—the ‘me too’ messages and the CCs and BCCs—they could reduce e-mail usage by 50 percent to 80 percent,” Wilkins said. “That would release a lot of the need for storage and backup.”

Companies should set policies and processes for routing e-mails so that the files don’t bombard users’ mailboxes, said Sabrina Parsons, CEO of Palo Alto Software, which targets its Email Center Pro e-mail management system at the small business team environment.

“Between spam and personal e-mail,” Parsons said, “it’s inevitable that people declare ‘e-mail bankruptcy,’ ” the term for simply wiping out unread e-mails because it’s impossible to wade through them all.

A corporate e-mail policy should include guidelines on when e-mail is and is not the best communications channel for a given discussion, Parsons added. “Too many times these days, people e-mail when they can stand up and walk and talk to each other. My company uses instant messaging, and that’s cut down on the volume of e-mail. Instead of sending an e-mail to ask a quick question, you just shoot an IM and you’re done, and you don’t have to have five e-mails going back and forth.”

Storage or Bonuses?
Regulating employees’ e-mail usage can be a tricky task for management. If an organization takes a heavy-handed approach and monitors all e-mail, users will seek ways around the policy, Wilkins said. Such an approach might be necessary in organizations that are highly litigated and regulated, such as financial services, but might prove ineffective in an IT environment.

Instead of playing the role of enforcer, Wilkins said, management might try engaging employees in the process by pointing out the operational and storage costs involved in maintaining massive e-mail volumes.

“That is an approach that’s a little more proactive and positive,” he said. “Managers can say to their employees, ‘If it comes to taking extra funds we have left at the end of the year and paying out storage costs or paying out bonuses, which would you prefer we do?’ It asks users to think about what they’re doing, especially what they’re doing with CCs and BCCs.”

E-mail management can also figure into legal matters. CEOs don’t expect to be sued or subpoenaed, so they may dismiss the importance of e-mail storage and backup, Wilkins said. But by instituting an appropriate e-mail management policy, organizations can safeguard against inadvertent disclosures, as well as reduce the risk of sanctions for not having e-mails they’re supposed to have if they are ever asked to produce them in court.

According to Wilkins, a lack of e-mail disclosure tripped up Morgan Stanley in a 2007 judgment that ordered it to pay US$1.58 billion to Coleman Holdings, which had sued the firm over what Coleman called a fraudulent stock transaction. The ruling was subsequently overturned. But Morgan Stanley had supposedly destroyed a year’s worth of e-mail, some of which could have helped it mount its defense.

Wilkins said that companies can reduce their liability by setting an effective e-mail management policy, laying out processes and procedures for compliance, and then putting the requisite technologies in place to enable them. Such technology includes basic e-mail archiving capabilities, sophisticated electronic discovery tools, policy management and enforcement tools, and personal archive file management products.

Related Search Term(s): e-mail, professional development, Access Sciences, Azaleos, Palo Alto Software

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