People have been saying that email is broken for a while now, but I thought the pronouncement premature because I still find it an immensely useful and incredibly powerful communication tool.

I’ve changed my mind.

In a meeting today to redesign the way a Fortune 100 corporation handles incoming Internet e-mail, I learned that of the multiple millions of messages the current infrastructure handles per day, 99.7 percent of those messages are spam, viruses or of suspicious nature. Of the total incoming messages, 88 percent are simply blocked due to dangerous attachments detected by the system or for tripping the spam detection rules. Another 11 percent are flagged as spam or spam-like, but delivered to the end user. The messaging group provides a special rule in Outlook to deal with these messages. It is uncertain what percent of these message are actual spam or not.

The infrastructure, staff, software, reporting and development costs to handle this mess are massive. While email is a crucial aspect of any business’s communication platform, and should have adequated resources dedicate to its efficient operation, when is enough enough?