Email failure 'worse than divorce'

The report, sponsored by data-storage software company Veritas Software, also found "alarming deficiencies" in email system management and backup and recovery methods.

According to the study, 4 percent of IT managers said that when unplanned downtime in email systems occurs, it takes less than one hour to restore. Fifteen percent said it takes an hour, and 41 percent said it takes more than an hour to get the entire system up and running -- including 9 percent who said it takes 24 hours or more. Thirty-nine percent did not know how long it would take to restore their email systems.

"Email has become far more than a communication tool, placing a huge responsibility on organisations to ensure that email is always available," said Mark Bregman, Veritas' executive vice president for product operations. "When IT managers fail to keep the systems running, they inhibit the ability of the entire organisation to conduct business."

Research firm Dynamic Markets conducted the study, which involved 850 IT managers in corporations across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and South Africa.

Earlier this month, research firm The Radicati Group released a study saying email archiving is either very or somewhat important to 86 percent of companies but only 37 percent have a formal email archiving policy in place. The group said email archiving regulations, along with companies' fears of lawsuits, are pushing the need to archive. The market for email archiving is expected to reach more than $164m (£100m) by the end of 2003 and grow to $1.4bn by 2007, according to The Radicati Group.

Veritas' report found that although 99 percent of companies said they back up email and attachments, 56 percent have at least some of their email locations excluded from automated backup. And although 39 percent of respondents thought email could be used as legal evidence for or against their company, 46 percent said it would be difficult to locate and retrieve a particular email on the system if it was requested.

Ninety-two percent of the organisations surveyed claimed to have the ability to recover emails, but only 18 percent said they could recover emails from further back than a year. Thirty percent said they could recover back only to one month, and 11 percent said the previous week was as far back as they could go.

Keeping email systems running is stressful for IT managers, according to the study. Properly functioning email systems are so critical that 68 percent of companies said users get irate within as little as 30 minutes without email access. Within just 24 hours of email system failure, almost one-fifth of IT managers said their jobs would be on the line. And the study found that for 34 percent of chief information officers and IT managers, a week without a working corporate email system would be more traumatic than events such as a minor car accident, moving to a new home, or getting married or divorced.