The future of email in the business world is threatened by both the rapidly rising volume of spam and increased competition from instant messaging, according to research firm IDC. But other analysts disagree.

The combination of spam and instant messaging (IM), said IDC analyst Mark Levitt in his report 'Worldwide Email Usage Forecast, 2003-2007: Spam and Instant Messaging Take a Bite Out of Email,' is putting email's place as the dominant form of electronic communication and collaboration in doubt.

Citing estimates that peg spam as representing 32 percent of all inbound and outbound email sent on an average day in 2003, Levitt said that the ever-increasing amount of junk mail reduces email's effectiveness by forcing IT staffs and end users to spend more time and money identifying, preventing, and deleting spam before it hits inboxes.

Instant messaging is the second front that email faces. IM has two big advantages over traditional email: it works in real-time and its present capabilities allow users to see the online status of colleagues and customers. Those qualities are attractive to corporations, which increasingly are turning to IM for chores once reserved for email.

There's no doubt that spam is a problem. Other research firms peg spam as a much higher percentage of all email than does IDC; Gartner, for instance, estimates that spam makes up 50 to 60 percent of all inbound messages received by enterprises. And a recent survey of consumers by the non-profit Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 60 percent of Americans had reduced their email use to avoid the constant barrage of Viagra, pornography, and debut reduction messages.

But that doesn't mean business email is headed for the trash bucket, said analysts who took exception to IDC's conclusions.

While spam may be a major problem now, in the long run it will be manageable, and will never reach the point where it cripples enterprise email and makes the media useless.

'By the fourth quarter of 2004, 85 percent of enterprises will have enterprise-level spam filtering in place,' said Murene Kaplan Grey, a research director with Gartner.

'Organisations are in the same place today as they were two years ago with viruses,' she said. 'They're just trying to put out fires.' But as anti-spam technology improves, and more companies defend against it at the firewall, spam will become a 'manageable problem, not one that eliminates email's usefulness,' Grey said.

'Even though we live in lean times, money will be found to fix the [spam] problem,' she added. Email is simply too important for the money not to be spent on spam defense.

David Ferris, who heads Ferris Research, a firm that concentrates on messaging issues in the enterprise, agreed that the spam problem would ultimately be licked.

'There's no question that spam hinders the effectiveness of email now,' Ferris said, 'but it will become less of a problem as time goes on.' Inside of five years, Ferris estimates, spam 'should be a solved problem, like viruses are now'.

And Grey and Ferris both took exception to IDC's take on instant messaging threatening email's dominance.

'Instant messaging is another channel of communication,' said Ferris. 'I don't think it threatens email at all. Instead, I'd argue that it actually increases email's position.' Many conversations in business, he said, might begin with IM, but often end up with email for such tasks as forwarding long missives or sending file attachments.

Grey also sees IM as complementary, not competitive, with email. 'IM is a different type of communication, used for a different purpose [than email].

Both analysts were convinced that a convergence of sorts between email and IM was in the cards. Some of IM's traits, such as its presence awareness, are increasingly being slipped into enterprise email, such as in the latest releases from the two biggest email players, Lotus and Microsoft. Within five years, Ferris estimated, all email will have integrated this IM characteristic.

'We're headed toward a convergence of the two, but not where one overtakes the other,' Grey said.

Copyright (c) 2003 CMP Media LLC