UK businesses spend thousands on e-mail recovery

Medium-sized businesses can incur costs of thousands of pounds per year for e-mail recovery, according to Kroll Ontrack, the data management firm.

The company estimated typical IT administrators spend a quarter of their e-mail administration time dealing with mailbox recoveries. Much of this can be avoided by simple archive management, said the firm.

Research by Kroll showed IT administrators typically manage 1,000 mailboxes and have to deal with three requests for refreshing lost e-mails a month. The work can take up to 38 hours a month.

Recovery costs will increase as the volume of emails received by companies grows. E-mail volumes are expected to rise by 49% by 2012, Kroll said.