BIOS: Technology Means Business

E-mail and Internet content security provider Marshal commented recently on the IDC report regarding e-mail growth and alternatives such as IM and VoIP.

IDC stated this month that the increasing volume of spam e-mail messages could drive users to use alternative medias such as instant messaging (IM) and low-cost VoIP calls.

“IDC’s statement is true for home e-mail users, especially teenagers and young adults. Spam certainly has tarnished the benefits of e-mail and IDC’s point of driving growth towards alternative medias such as instant messaging and VOIP, rings true for younger consumers,” said Marshal’s Director Product Management, Bradley Anstis.

“However, this isn’t the death of e-mail for business to business organisations,” said Anstis. “E-mail has been established as the mission critical communication tool for business and we predict this will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. We don’t see IM becoming a major competitor to business e-mail. We estimate, as a matter of policy, about 50% of businesses today don’t allow employees to use IM on their networks. “IM also doesn’t provide a good record of what’s agreed or promised during a ‘conversation’, while e-mails are accepted as corporate records.”

IDC also predicted e-mail levels will reach 97 billion messages this year, 40 billion of which will be spam and IDC also predicted unsolicited e-mail will exceed person-to-person e-mail messages for the first time. “The reality for businesses is that spam exceeding person-to-person e-mail, has been the case for some time now. When it comes to combating spam effectively, organisations need to take a strategic long-term approach for their in-house business communication tool. And organisations are able to justify the cost of enterprise based anti-spam defences and outsourced e-mail services,” commented Anstis.

“Our own customers are winning the war against spam. Marshal delivers an effective 99.5% spam capture rate, which allows our customers to focus on communicating with legitimate business e-mails, rather than sorting through volumes of unwanted spam. The underlying message implied in the IDC report is that organisations need protection against emerging e-mail threats,” Anstis said. “It is true that the growth of image spam is placing unprecedented pressures on some anti-spam systems. But as soon as the industry masters image spam, another technique will emerge.

“At Marshal, we are on a continuous development path to stay ahead and track spam trends, Our customer’s benefit through our R&D and TRACE (Threat Research and Content Engineering) laboratory. “We have made changes to our R&D processes and tools to take new spamming technologies into account and our results speak for themselves.”

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