By Ovum, 6 June 2003 16:10
COMMENT Spam has become a plague on all our inboxes, leading some to wonder whether email is set to become obsolete as an effective communications tool. Alan Pelz-Sharpe, VP of research and consulting, North America at Ovum asks is email really worth the hassle? It's the kind of question that doesn't get asked all that often in IT circles. Yet after having deleted over fifty spam items from my inbox this morning I am in the mood to ask it. One often hears 'experts' telling us that there is no point in building a business case for things like office applications or email anymore. Such things, they argue, are part of the infrastructure, overhead costs just the same as carpets and lighting. I have a favourite Anglo Saxon expression beginning with the letter b that describes this sort of thinking, and it's not 'balderdash'. If email and office applications are measured or valued in the same way as carpets and lighting, then corporate mailroom staff are currently walking around on hand-knotted Persian rugs, and basking in the glow of Tiffany lamps. Let me stick my neck out and say that I do not believe there is a demonstrable business case, in many instances, to support the roll out of PCs complete with office apps, web access and email. Not as many people as we think actually need this stuff - many like to have it but far fewer actually need it. Over the past few weeks we have all watched concern grow and grow over the deluge of spam. We have watched in parallel the IT industry selling more and more spam-blocking software. And as our organisations move from 2000 to XP, from version this to version that, loading upgrades to applications that are seldom used, simply to avoid a breach of our licence terms, shouldn't we just occasionally ask if it's all necessary? Over the past few weeks I have spent a lot of time talking to IT managers around the globe for a report I am currently writing. I have asked them to tell me about the real world they deal with and face on a day-to-day basis. It's something we all do at Ovum, and conducting these interviews is always something of a sobering exercise. A pattern often emerges in these interviews, whereby those organisations that are highly IT literate and have all the staff 'wired', seem to be slowly sinking beneath a mountain of data and complexity. Those IT managers who work in 'old fashioned', 'slow to change' organisations often tell me about the nightmare they face in bringing their organisations into the IT era. Yet when I ask this latter group (and I always do) what impact and cost the lack of IT has had to date they often have no answer. In fact their organisations have very often continued to move forward at the same pace as their more technology-minded peers. I am not a complete luddite, just a partial one. I am more motivated by a hatred of waste than a hatred of technology. If staff really have come to rely on email, wouldn't a Blackberry be more cost effective and useful sometimes? If an office worker needs access to a CRM system then do they really need access to anything else? If a paper driven business process works well, then why change it? Are you sure it will work better once automated? Simple but seldom asked questions. The bottom line every time has to be, is my expenditure justified? Add up the Microsoft or Lotus licences currently active in your organisation, look at the total cost and ask yourself, is that cost really justified? My suspicion is that often its not. For further information see www.ovum.com or email APS@ovum.com.
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