Anticlue

Got to love email

I came across Sean's warnings of emails and attachments. Basically to place up a website in order to control the attachments, but I think it really equates to where your company is and email is.

At my lovely organization, email has become a knowledge management type system. Since there is not really one in place, email is a substitute. Recently, we have recieved notification that everyone will be limited to 60MB of email space. Since having in one's email all of the project movements, clarifications, and decision points since your first day of employment has been standard operating procedures. 60 MB is really small. I have contracts in my email for project for next year where the document attached is over 60 MB. I also have screen shots of vendor system bugs that also equate to alot of space. I could place these on the network in a file system, but either way space needs to be consumed. I could put these on a website with a CMS, but still space will be consumed.

Other issue, is that the Content Management System project for our organization is still in the RFP stage, so not everyone has access to the web. Plus, I really don't believe that placing a contract on the web is the best way to attack the problem. But a CMS and the contract, would definitely be a great way to control the version control problem with contracts, and searching through the contract for key terms. Although security issues and view time between the two companies would really need to be handled.

So what am I saying, I guess it comes down to this. If an organization is going to limit email, a couple of other items need to be in place.

1. An easy way to exchange documents between organizations, where the link is secure and a click away.
2. A process in place to handle the security of the documents exchanged.
3. Easy availablity to place and update the documents being exchanged.
4. Storage space will always be needed.