Spam is down but e-mail storage is up, finds survey

We are just wrapping up a study of e-mail users in the workplace to determine a variety of things, including how they use e-mail while at work, how much they use it, what they think of their primary e-mail client and so forth. Here are a few highlights of what we’re finding:

* Other research that we and others have done show that the vast majority of e-mail users in the workplace are protected by some sort of anti-spam system. In this study, we’re finding that spam filtering is working. For example, reviewing the current statistics of major managed service providers reveals that spam currently represents an average of about 65% to 70% of all e-mail. However, our study shows that spam represents only 17% of all e-mail that users receive on a typical day. Further, one-third of users report that spam represents less than 5% of the e-mail they receive.

* When asked to compare the number of e-mails sent and received during a typical day now compared to one year ago, we are finding that the number of e-mails sent by the average user has increased by 15% over the past year, while the number of e-mails received has increased by 20%. However, other research we’ve conducted shows that message stores are increasing by more than 30% each year. Clearly, the growth of e-mail storage is driven only partly by increased use of e-mail, but even more by growth in the use of attachments, richer multimedia use and other factors, as well.

* Underscoring the notion that e-mail is a critical communications tool for most users is our finding that just over 40% of users check their e-mail every few minutes while they’re in the office, while a slightly higher percentage check it a few times each hour.