The respondents were selected from CNI s Research Advisory Panel and database of messaging users. The interviews were conducted by telephone and via Web-based surveys. To qualify for inclusion in the survey, companies needed to have a minimum of 1,500 email users. The following Table 4 shows a profile of the organizations questioned. The cost analysis uses the following assumptions for calculating the cost of administration and management, lost productivity and lost revenue.
All companies have backup procedures, most on a daily basis.
Yet 83 percent of users can t access the backup without getting an administrator involved. Usually these users have to send a request to the system administrator or call the help desk. Valuable information is lost and a lot of time wasted looking for or recreating messages simply because the backup and archive system is so difficult. The time stretches to 11.2 hours if it is as much as a year old. By that time most users have given up.