Businesses are continuing to drown in email and, with the cousin of the Sarbanes Oxley directive soon to visit and stay for good in Europe in the form of EuroSOX, they need to start seriously taking control.
So says Fujitsu Siemens Computers who, in response to email data growth and compliance issues, has launched a new solution and an accompanying industry initiative to help IT managers weather the impending storm.
The infrastructure giant used this week's Storage Networking World (SNW) Europe in Frankfurt as a launch pad for the new addition to its portfolio, which blends a technical solution with quirky marketing in the form of hints and tips for end users.
The company also cited a recent IDC study, which positioned email management as companies' number one priority as another validation of its new solution, which offers end-to-end message management and archiving for Microsoft Exchange through a blend of hardware, software and professional services.
It has been developed through partnership with EMC, NetApp and Symantec.
"Email is quite a significant part of a company's infrastructure. I know people who are using it as a filing system. Most people work with Outlook for eight hours a day and still have no clue how it works," said Marcus Schneider, director of storage product marketing at the company.
"When I started work about 20 years ago, most of the day was spent on the telephone. I probably got about 20-25 calls a day whereas now I receive 100 to 150 emails and I try to answer them all. So the amount of time spent on communications is getting much smaller."
As part of the initiative, Fujitsu Siemens has also created a 2009 flip calendar that provides guidance on how to deal with the growing email headache next year in addition to an online questionnaire so users can find out what type of email habits they really have.
