News / Business
Online Spam Index Compares Users' Email Experiences
Tool leads to easier technology assessment and experience comparisons
The online tool is available at http://www.brockmann.com/index.php/spam-index-calculator.html. The Spam Index, a new method in anti-spam performance measurement leverages users’ real-world experiences. The Spam Index was first introduced in the Brockmann & Company report, The Problem with Email which showed that organizations with lower Spam Index had significantly superior business performance than firms with higher Spam Index. Results of the report are based on the responses of 520 business users of email services from around the world.
The Spam Index is based on the number of spam messages that users receive in their inboxes, messages that need to be resent and good messages trapped by the anti-spam system (false positives). Most distinctly, the Spam Index takes into account the time users spend managing spam including deleting junk messages, scanning anti-spam folders and investigating the authenticity of messages that appear legitimate.
With the online Spam Index Calculator, business email users can determine their Spam Index and understand how their experience compares to the 520 business email users who had participated in the research. From these results, new technologies can be effectively assessed not just for their effect on spam, but for their effect on the users' experience.
According to Peter Brockmann, president of Brockmann & Company, “Email is consistently recognized as the most important communications service affecting job performance in virtually all industries and all job roles. Yet spam continues to detract from user productivity by providing too many inappropriate, anonymous, bulk and irrelevant messages. The Spam Index is the first objective real world tool that takes into account real-world user experiences in comparing the effectiveness of anti-spam technologies. The Spam Index uniquely provides the link to real-world user experience, something missing in earlier technology evaluations.”
When evaluating technologies with the Spam Index, lower scores represent the best performing technologies. The report finds that the best performing anti-spam technology is challenge-response, based on that technology’s lowest average Spam Index score of 160. The 160 score is 50% less than the next lowest average score of 316 achieved by hosted services, indicating that challenge response is twice as effective as hosted services for prevention of spam. The worst performing technology was filter-based ISP solutions, with a Spam Index of 442.
The full Spam Index Report-Comparing Real-World Performance of Anti-Spam Technologies is available from Brockmann & Company's website. Brockmann & Company is a consulting & advisory firm serving high tech equipment & application vendors and service providers. Clients accelerate growth through customer research & thought leadership. Learn more at http://www.brockmann.com.
