Email has always presented its share of problems, and now one company is planning to do away with it altogether. European IT firm Atos expects to ban employees from using email in 18 months, reports Peter Allen at the U.K.'s Daily Mail. 

Atos CEO Thierry Breton said the company's 800,000 employees are wasting too much time sifting through their email, 90 percent of which is irrelevant. "It is not right that some of our fellow employees spend hours in the evening dealing with their e-mails," he said. "The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face."

The company plans to start phasing out the pesky communications medium now and be rid of it within a year and a half. Breton wants to see his employees engaging in more real-time communications, such as instant messaging, and face-to-face conversations. "If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message," he said. "Emails cannot replace the spoken word."

A business watchdog organization called ORSE recently presented a study showing that reading through unnecessary communications has a negative impact on concentration.  After reading a useless message, it takes 64 seconds to regain concentration.

For more:
- see Peter Allen's article at the Daily Mail

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