Barry, At the risk of sounding like a Microsoft shill, I would refer you and Nolene Sherman, who has posted a related question about managing email today, to the comments that Microsoft submitted to the Judicial Conference of the United States regarding the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding electronic discovery. I had earlier mentioned these comments in reply to a question about Instant Messaging. The comments are at http://www.prestongates.com/Images/pubs/MicrosoftFRPCComments.pdf and a related diagram is at http://www.prestongates.com/Images/pubs/SampleNetworkDiagram.pdf. (Thanks again, PeterK.) In their comments, Microsoft provides a good discussion of the management and storage issues related to the vast volumes of emails in industry generally, and Microsoft Corp. more specifically. I found it useful, and I think others would, too. To quote one portion of their comments related to your specific question: "Email Volumes are Staggering. The amount of email that Microsoft has received in 2004 is roughly double what it received in 2003. Most of that increase is due to "spam", i.e., commercial junk email. Microsoft's IT network now receives 250-300 million messages a month from the outside. Internal messages sent and received average 60-90 million a month. Automatic systems are indispensable to deal with this flood. The automatic filters in the "gateway/firewall" that protect our network now delete 85-90% of all incoming internet e-mail as spam. That still leaves 30-45 million legitimate emails per month that are delivered to employees. While email is by far the most commonly used data type, there are many others that substantially add to the volume of electronically stored information. The efforts of individual employees are not usually up to the challenge of managing this torrent of data. As a result, most large institutions must at least consider using automatic processes to dispose of data that is no longer needed for any business or legal purpose. The proposed amendments are a useful first step toward addressing this reality by balancing the need for the preservation and production of evidence relevant to litigations with the need of large organizations to manage their IT systems in a rational and efficient manner." Greg Schildmeyer, CRM Director of Records Management State of Missouri -----Original Message----- From: Barry Kirk [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 11:39 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Percentage of business related emails Can anyone direct me to any information or research that may be available on what percentage of emails sent in the workplace are actually business related? Perhaps someone has done some benchmarking or is there a rough rule of thumb that applies? Thanks Barry Kirk Records Manager Corporate & Property Services Division Sydney Catchment Authority Tel: (02) 4725 3249 Fax: (02) 4725 3251 Email: [log in to unmask] **************************************************************************** *************************** This e-mail, and any files transmitted, is intended for the use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed and must not be resent by the recipient unless the permission of the originator is first obtained. It may contain confidential or privileged information and, if you are not the intended recipient, you must immediately destroy the original transmission and its contents. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the originator of the message. Any views expressed in this e-mail do not represent the views of the Sydney Catchment Authority unless otherwise stated. **************************************************************************** *************************** List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance