Email administrators at most companies are struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing storage demands of email. A frequently raised question is: What is the main force driving the consistent increase in email traffic?
Here is another example of why companies must take better care in protecting their communication infrastructure (see also my post on KP). An internal memo to all Apple employees sent earlier today announced shipping delays for both the much-anticipated iPhone and the Leopard OS. The bad news spread quickly to the Internet appearing on Engadget’s web site promptly sending Apple’s stock for a dip.
HP was forced to disclose its second quarter forecast before the scheduled official announcement date due to one of those unfortunate email address slip-ups. An email containing the latest financial results was accidentally sent to an unintended external recipient.
I am sure that many of us can sympathize with the employee’s mistake. The common use of multiple address books containing internal and external addresses often mixed with personal contacts in combination with the oh-so-handy recipient type-ahead feature of contemporary email clients make it very easy to send a message to the wrong address.
In light of recent high-profile cases involving email as evidence (Intel vs. AMD, Oracle vs. SAP and the White House email scandal), many companies not currently bound by regulatory rules are recognizing the need for a comprehensive archiving strategy in order to mitigate overall legal risks
(see also: Outside email use puts companies at risk and Losing emails is difficult, but finding them may prove expensive).
The Wall Street Journal this week featured a front-page article entitled: “How an Email Rant Jolted a Big HMO”, a story about a whistleblower email at Kaiser Permanente.
One Friday last fall, a junior staffer at the healthcare giant released an email tirade to all of the company’s employees, highly critical of Kaiser’s executive management team and their handling of the HealthConnect project.
This is a follow-up to a previous post: “Outside email use puts companies at risk”. As it turns out, the use of personal email accounts at work is pretty wide spread. Michael Osterman, the president of Osterman Research, released a study earlier this month, which reveals that 60% of employees interviewed at midsize to large companies are using personal email accounts for business communication on a regular basis. In fact, 17% admit of doing so every day.
Stefan Mehlhorn is the CEO of Permessa Corp. a Waltham, MA based company providing enterprise messaging management solutions and consulting services to many of the worlds largest corporations.
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