Atos aims to abolish internal email use by 2014

International IT services company Atos Origin has said it will have eradicated email within the company by 2014.

Speaking at a web conference this morning, Atos chairman Thierry Breton said he planned to have an email-free company within three years and instead be using communication applications as well as collaboration and social media tools.

He said: "We are producing data on a scale that is fast polluting our working environments and encroaching on our personal lives too. We are looking to reverse this trend.

"The volume of emails we send and receive is almost impossible to deal with. Managers spend between five and 20 hours a week reading and writing emails.

"To enable this move we have already established collaboration tools and social community platforms to share and keep track of ideas and programmes being run inside the company."

The company claims that tools of this sort have already reduced email by between 10 and 20 per cent.

"Businesses need to do more of this – email is on the way out as the best way to run a company and do business," he added.

This move follows the launch of a series of initiatives in 2009 as part of the company's Wellbeing at Work programme. These initiatives encourage the use of tools such as Office Communicator, a Microsoft Office communications tool that enables instant messaging, video conferencing and telephony.