Getting A Handle on E-Mail Misuse
A new British survey on the misuse of e-mail sheds new light on how workers are wasting time on the job.
For men, the top office e-mail misuse is flirting (27%), while for women it’s planning their social life with friends (32%).
The survey was conducted by e-mail marketing company edesigns.co.uk and included responses from more than 500 men and women. Its spin: That e-mail has replaced the office coffee machine as the vehicle for work-time gossiping and social interaction.
Men admitted to spending more than 40 minutes each work day flirting or gossiping via e-mail. In addition to flirting (27%), their other e-mail wastes included gossiping about staff (18%), forwarding pornographic URLs (13%), contacting non-work friends (16%), organizing their social life (11%) and forwarding jokes to colleagues (5%).
For women, the misuse was led by planning their social life (32%), contacting siblings (18%), gossiping about staff (15%), flirting at the office (13%), forwarding pornographic URLs (7%), and seeking new employment (6%).
To halt the misuse, companies are advised to adopt clear e-mail usage policies, communications via employment contracts, manuals and Intranets.
IT Services: A Fragmented Market
The worldwide IT services industry remains a fragmented market, with no single vendor dominating the market, according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of Gartner Inc.
The 10 largest vendors generated a total of $122 billion in revenue during 2000 — which is less than 20% of the entire market.
The largest services vendor in 2000 was IBM, with 5% of the market share and $33.1 billion in revenue. It was followed, in order of market share, by EDS, Computer Sciences Corp., Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Zerox, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, NTT Data. (Each had between 2.9% and 1% of the market.) “Others” accounted for 81.6% of the market.
Dean Blackmore, industry analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s IT services worldwide group, said: “In the United States, we estimate that there are at least 15,000 services companies. In examining the top 400 IT services vendors worldwide, these vendors as a group account for less than 50 percent of the total market and many of these leading firms lost market share in 2000.”
Wasted Spending on Application Server Technology
Is your enterprise spending a bundle on application server technology? If yes, you might be overspending.
Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., reports that companies have overspent about $1 billion on application server technology colutions since 1998, and an additiona $2 billion may be wwasted between now and 2003.
Gartner has several recommendations for companies when they purchase and implement application server technology:
- Application server is a function, not a product. Check your technology inventory to see if you already have the capability in an existing product or a free product.
- Application server is not the same as Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). For example, the Microsoft Product line lacks J2EE and Java, but has application server functionality.
- As components of application server technology, J2EE and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) are not the same thing. Most Java projects use Java Server Pages (JSP)/servlet capabilities and not EJB. Higher-priced application servers are designed to run EJB, yet they are using JSP/servlet capabilities instead.
- Don’t let confusion or hype push you to spend more than necessary.
“The application server vendors are encouraging customers to purchase higher-end technology that they just don’t need,” said David Smith, Gartner vice president and research director. “It’s like buying gourmet food to feed kids at summer camp. It’s just not necessary.”