Google has unveiled a
"cost of spam" calculator for businesses.
"This simple calculator lets you see how much spam can impact
expenses and productivity, particularly if your current anti-spam
solution is waning in effectiveness," said Google.
The calculator is also designed to try and persuade firms that
Google's own anti-spam
products are worth investing in.
Google says, "Once you quantify how much spam is costing your
company, it makes sense to re-evaluate the IT options for managing
spam. The first, and perhaps biggest, decision is whether to keep
spam filtering in-house or use a hosted service.
"It can be difficult to add up the true expenses of each
solution. On the surface, the cost of an appliance may seem
reasonable, but the up-front costs are just the beginning in a
complete cost-of-ownership calculation."
Google sells a hosted anti-spam service based on the technology
from Postini, a company it acquired around a year ago.
The ROI (return on investment) Calculator compares the cost of
using an internally managed anti-spam system and a hosted one. It
takes into account the number of employees at a firm and works out
how many hours of productivity are lost per year per employee as a
result of spam.