The Darker Side Of Electronic Mail

By Dave Molta  Among the many technology issues that challenge network and system managers, none is more significant than the provision of e-mail services. With all due respect to the importance of the many vertical business applications that are the bread and butter of our application infrastructures, e-mail is the application that most people simply cannot live without. In many organizations, e-mail has supplanted more traditional telephone interaction, as well as face-to-face and group meetings, as the dominant mode of communication. At the same time, e-mail is killing many of us--commanding an ever-increasing proportion of our time just to sift through all the junk to get to the meaningful content, and the expectation of fa st responses is defining many knowledge workers as interrupt-driven. It is nothing short of amazing that some people even brag about the hundreds of e-mail messages they receive every day, seemingly oblivious to the fact that managing this volume of electronic correspondence may not be the best use of their time. Beyond the organizational issue of e-mail overload, we also continue to wrestle with the underlying messaging technology itself. While most organizations long ago recognized the obsolescence of legacy host-based e-mail applications, many continue to run these systems simply because acceptable client/server e-mail alternatives do not exist. Some of you, and a number of vendors, might take exception to this assessment, but I remain convinced that today's leading e-mail systems are either management nightmares or deficient in functionality, and many are both. I'd like to take this opportunity to address the effect that e-mail has on many organizations. In next month's column, I'll tackle some of the technology issues and management challenges associated with upgrading an outdated e-mail infrastructure. Excuse me while I check my e-mail. According to my research, there are 32.5 billion e-mail addresses on the Internet. OK, I just made up that number, but based on the volume of unsolicited e-mail messages I find in my inbox on a daily basis, it sure seems like an accurate number. Many of these messages are pure spam, bulk-mail advertisements for get-rich-quick schemes or, ironically, for bulk e-mail services. Others are less sinister (perhaps even well-intended) messages from vendors, PR firms or user groups that have somehow decided to add me to their mailing lists. Because 10 percent of the messages are actually valuable in some way, I don't bother pursuing the removal of my name from their lists. A third set of messages is automatically generated by e-mail-enabled applications. I get lots of these, including daily system status summaries, and I have every reason to believe that the volume will increase as more applications integrate messaging capabilities into their workflow modules. Finally, I am dealing with an increased volume of what we might refer to as "intraspam"--unsolicited group mailings originating inside my own organization. These are usually messages that are forwarded to an internal list by individuals who think I might be interested in the topic. I confess: I'm a source of a fair amount of this type of message as well--"FYI, thought you might find this message interesting."

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