Reducing the $50 Billion Global Spam Bill; Public Webinar by Ferris Research on March 2, 2005

Business Wire, Feb 23, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- Lost productivity and other expenses associated with spam will cost U.S. businesses $17 billion in 2005, up from $10 billion in 2003, according to The Global Economic Impact of Spam, 2005, a new report just issued by Ferris Research, a San Francisco-based consultancy.

Worldwide costs could reach $50 billion, primarily because of lost employee productivity. Not included in these figures are immeasurable items, such as the missed "opportunity cost" of a new customer order that's incorrectly discarded as spam.

The report also finds that organizations can minimize this loss of productivity by deploying an accurate anti-spam system.

"The return on investment (ROI) for anti-spam software is attractive for most organizations, though desktop-based anti-spam tools usually have a lower ROI than server-based tools," said Ferris Research president David Ferris. "Very low false positive rates are needed to drive down costs further."

The report will be discussed in a free Webinar on March 2 with David Ferris and Richi Jennings, and is more fully described at http://www.ferris.com/view_content.php?o=Spam Control&id=719. Topics to be covered include:

--The broad economic impact of spam, as well as the costs of spam to individual businesses

--The cost of spam in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the U.K., the U.S., and world-wide

--How the costs break down between users' time, anti-spam technology costs, and help desk costs

--How the costs differ between manual solutions, desktop anti-spam tools, and server-based anti-spam tools

--Typical costs per user

--How an organization can calculate its own cost of spam

--The ROI of implementing anti-spam technology

The Global Economic Impact of Spam, 2005 is available from Ferris Research for $795 -- see http://www.ferris.com/view_content.php?o=Statistics & Surveys&id=645 A companion report, Calculating Spam Costs for Your Organization is available for $295, and both can be purchased together for $995 -- see http://www.ferris.com/view_content.php?o=Cost of Ownership&id=720. For purchase information, contact Walter Scheiber at walter.scheiber@ferris.com, or 415-986-1414 ext. 103.

About Ferris Research

Ferris Research is a San Francisco-based market and technology research firm that specializes in messaging and collaboration technologies such as email, instant messaging, wireless connectivity, and virus and spam control. For more information, visit http://www.ferris.com/ or call 415-986-1414. For fastest response, send email to press@ferris.com.