The Problem with eMail

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! Addressing the challenges of eMail Andy Porter Senior Technology Advocate, IBM

Agenda
Who am I?
Some definitions
Some History
Is eMail the victim of its own success?
Phones 4 U – did they really ban eMail?
Collaboration vs Communication
Contextual Collaboration
Culture
Questions

Who am I? – 17 Years of Messaging
Late 80’s wrote a graphical shell for VMS Mail
Supported DecNotes – the precursor to Lotus Notes
Early 90’s managed an MS Mail system for a National Newspaper Group
Mid 90’s joined Lotus – became cc:Mail skilled
Late 90’s – became Notes/Domino and Outlook/Exchange skilled
Now become Collaboration and Portals skilled

Lets define our terms
Messaging
Email
Calendar & scheduling
Task Management
Personal Contacts
Messaging is the bottom rung of the collaboration stack
Collaboration
Shared team spaces
Shared document repositories
Workflow
Collaborative apps
Expertise location
Instant messaging and eMeetings

Before we study some of the challenges of Mail – let’s remember that things have improved!

Snail Mail – A bit slow

pMail – Still pretty basic

Remember OfficeVision/VM?

Did you use Pine at University?

Early 90’s Mail and Calendar were separate MS Mail and Schedule+

Late 90’s Mail and Calendar were separate cc:Mail and Lotus Organiser

Email worked fine within organisations
Departmental efficiencies
Improved communication
Linked distributed locations
Basic group scheduling
Less phone calls
Less “Snail Mail”

But not well between organisations
There used to be Gateways between everything and everyone
MS Mail to cc:Mail gateway
OfficeVision/VM to Lotus Notes gateway
MS Exchange to Lotus Domino MTA
Even like to like gateways
There was a faltering start with X.400
Very secure
But too complex
Still required a relationship with recipient organisation

Open standards are the answer
Standards give inter organisational email
SMTP - SIMPLE message transfer protocol
RFC 821/822 - Message and Envelope format
MIME - Advanced formatting
S/MIME - Security
Full interoperability between organisations
Message fidelity took a nose dive for a while
Now it is near 100% with modern systems
Standards based Calendar & Scheduling interoperability is following
iCal - invitations
iCalendar - Group scheduling/free time lookup
vCard - electronic business card
Real time collaboration is next
SIP - Instant Messaging, VoIP etc
Simple - Presence

Integrated Collaborative Environments (ICE) – MS Outlook

Integrated Collaborative Environments (ICE) – Lotus Notes

But many of these improvements actually caused the challenges we have now!

Open is fine but – SPAM!

Open is fine but – Nigerian 419 scam
I HAVE THE COURAGE TO ASK YOU TO LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND HONEST PERSON WHO WILL BE CAPABLE FOR THIS IMPORTANT BUSINESS BELIEVING THAT YOU WILL NEVER LET ME DOWN EITHER NOW OR IN FUTURE.
IN ORDER TO TRANSFER OUT (USD$126 MILLION DOLLARS) FROM OUR BANK.
AT THE CONCLUSION OF THIS BUSINESS, YOU WILL BE GIVEN 20% OF THE TOTAL AMOUNT, 75% WILL BE FOR ME, WHILE 5% WILL BE FOR EXPENSES BOTH PARTIES MIGHT HAVE INCURED DURING THE PROCESS OF TRANSFERING.
Pub Quiz: Named after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes

The best ever 419 scam
I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crew members returned to earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progress supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humour, but wants to come home.
In the 14-years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $15,000,000 American Dollars……..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/16/cosmic_419er/

Virus’ and Worms

Is eMail the victim of its’ own success?

How many users are employed to read email?
Yet when messaging is not available people say they cannot get on with their job!
Don’t have calendar to tell them where they should be
Don’t have tasks to tell them what they should be doing
Don’t have eMail to receive new instructions
Don’t have contacts to allow them to get in touch with customers and collegues
Either we must guarantee 100% availability or we must find ways of working smarter

Have we made it too easy?
People send attachments to large groups – because it’s easy
Everyone copies them locally and modify – never get the changes back
Delegation tends to be all or nothing – compromising security - because it is easy
Individual silos - mail files treated as file system – no one else can access it – but it’s easy
Mail shots sent to “everyone” or large groups despite not necessarily being relevant – because it’s easy

Other inefficiencies
Resistance to getting rid of mail – users don’t necessarily know what is important and what not
Quotas irritate users – but large mail files can reduce client and server performance
We are sent a lot a email which isn’t directly related to our job – too many mail shots to large groups
Assumptions: If I send you an email (or cc: you) – I assume you must now know that information – but do you?
People joining mail threads late don’t get any context from previous messages
Inappropriate use

Phones 4 U – did they really ban email?
In September 2003, Richard Caudwell CEO of Phones 4 U famously banned email
Caudwell said in a statement: "I saw that email was insidiously invading Phones 4U so I banned it immediately. Management and staff at HQ and in the stores were beginning to show signs of being constrained by email proliferation... Phones 4U staff have been told to get off the keyboards, get face-to-face or on to the phone to colleagues. The quality and efficiency of communication have been increased tremendously in one fell swoop; things are getting done, people aren't tied to their PCs."
Yet on their web site “ You can email us on: [email_address] ”
Proving – Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!

Collaboration not Communication

Asynchronous Collaboration
Team rooms
Threaded discussions
Document management
Knowledge Enablement
Expertise location
Real Time Collaboration

Real Time Collaboration
Presence awareness
Secure enterprise chat
Location awareness
eMeetings
Shared whiteboarding
Shared applications
Social paradimes
Expertise location, polling etc

Activity based collaboration
Rather than associating collaborations with file shares or team spaces, associate everything with the activity to which it belongs.
People
eMail
Chat transcripts
Documents
Meetings
Web pages
…
Anything!

Web 2.0/Social Networking – real or rubbish?
Wiki’s
Blogs
RSS
Flickr
Del.icio.us
Digg
You Tube/Google TV
MySpace

Contextual Collaboration: Portals

Enterprises are Dismantling Industrial Age Workplaces
In the past, people had to go to office complexes to be near the filing cabinets and each other. The "office" is now being discarded in favor of an “e-workplace.”

…and Building Electronic Workplaces instead Standard IT Architecture & Platforms Workflow Search Content Mgmt Doc Mgmt Online Learning Activity Management Team Places Instant Messaging Web Conferences E-Mail User Experience “ Smart Enterprise Suite” (Gartner) Role Specific Dashboards Knowledge Worker Desktops or Portal or Rich Client

Today, many people work like this...

People could work like this … personalised and integrated with the business role

It’s not just Desktop PC’s anymore. We need eMail on all devices.

In Business, Laptops now outsell Desktops

“New” types of Device offer new ways of working

Mobile Devices – Phones and PDA’s converge

Wireless Access – Push - Blackberry

Culture
Technology can only ENABLE collaboration
People CREATE collaboration
Example
Have Problem
Find Expert
Create Shared Team Space
Invite expert to participate
Expert says “No” 
Anecdotes
Ban attachments – get USB keys
Executive Thinkpads - Blackberry

Thank You. Questions? Andy Porter [email_address]

The Problem with eMail

by Andy Porter

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