And just to lighten up (?) the topic, Yahoo! has announced that it will
provide users UNLIMITED email storage starting in May and eventually
including every user. 

http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/27/technology/yahoo_storage.reut/index.htm
http://yodel.yahoo.com/2007/03/27/yahoo-mail-goes-to-infinity-and-beyond/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070328/tc_nm/yahoo_mail_dc
http://informata.blogspot.com/2007/03/yahoo-mail-goes-to-infinity-and-beyond
.html

For those of you who think that unlimited != unlimited, this is to compete
against Google who currently offers c. 2.8GB storage per user. I'm sure it
doesn't mean 161 exabytes of storage per user (and see the IDC study there)
but in essence you'd never have to delete an email again for want of storage
space. Eventually Google and MS will offer this as well. 

You say, "But we don't allow that/use that, so who cares?" Many of you used
to do your own payroll, store your own inactive records, etc. and have
chosen to outsource those as non-core functions. Email is a pretty important
system to have 100% available - and it's an expensive system to maintain
particularly given a) the growth of email b) the steeper growth of business
email usage c) constant requirements to upgrade, patch, apply critical fixes
and service packs, etc. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN all provide the ability to
host your corporate email. 

I'm not making a value judgement on whther that's a good idea or not, just
pointing out the potential. Discuss. :)

Jesse Wilkins
CDIA+, edp, LIT, ICP, ermm, ecmm
J Wilkins & Associates
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blog: http://informata.blogspot.com
(303) 574-1455 office
(303) 484-4142 fax
 

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