Have we reached the end of Email?

Thierry Breton of Atos is a bold, bold man!  He is banning the use of email internally.  Wow!  If it works, this man is a KM genius.

I will watch this experiment keenly over there, but not rushing to implement it myself.  I am quite intrigued, but knowing my organization, which is a bit on the older/conservative side, a little skeptical. I note a key passage in the article:




When we don't have internal email anymore we will have fantastic new tools - a
cloud computing environment, social networks, instant messaging, micro blogging,
document sharing, knowledge community - these offer a much better approach for
an information technology company.

An alternate ecosystem for information sharing must exist and be well used before our more entrenched email users will start sharing their information in that forum instead of email. We have some of this, but I would argue it's not well used. This transition will be easier for the 30-and-under crowd, as the article alludes to, and very difficult for those who have already lived through the revolutionary change to embrace email.

You cannot take tools away without first providing not just a replacement, but it must be an EXCELLENT replacement. So excellent that people immediately see the utility and its benefit to them.


I wouldn't take a bone away from a dog, unless I had a steak to offer!



Any different slants on this idea?