Storage headaches created by personal emails
Storage headaches created by personal emails
The results of a recent survey shows that one in four companies world-wide believe that 20 per cent of their email traffic is not related to work. The Hitachi Data Systems discovery was researched in 14 European, Middle-Eastern and African countries.
The survey states that 10 per cent of storage capacity in countries such as the U.K., Spain and Italy were found to be used to contain personal emails. One in five emails in these counties were also considered to be non-work related.
The results also highlighted that this amount of e-mail use is very costly to companies and has a negative strain on technology.
This problem is being made worse by new regulations which encourages companies to archive all e-mail messages for at least three years, causing extra stress on data storage systems. Analysts have found that the total number of emails sent daily worldwide is growing from 9.7 billion in 2000 to 35 billion in 2005.
Hitachi Data System's research claims that companies are failing to cope with this growing problem.
Nick Howe, Global Solution Services Director (EMEA) at Hitachi Systems: "Since most companies are reluctant to place draconian e-mail restrictions on their staff, they need to look at ways of storing e-mail content more efficiently.
"With new email archival regulations on the way, companies that fail to do this are likely to find themselves with a very large storage bill."
From an Australian perspective, John Brand, Vice President of Technology Research Services at Meta Group believes that the problem in Australia has more to do with attachments, video files, animation and other additional material sent with personal e-mails than the actual personal e-mail itself: " Personal notes do not take up much space. It is only the extra content sent with emails which creates the major headaches for companies. The personal emails are only causing problems because organisations have to figure out how to categorise and identify these messages. Therefore, it is causing a strain on companies who are trying to manage their storage strategies efficiently.
"Many organisations in Australia are now using filters with their email service so that those personal emails with large attachments are blocked automatically, which helps. This is a simplistic policy, but is one that seems to be working quite well in Australia in terms of keeping storage space down."Related Article: