Alexandra Bowie Consulting

From Silicon Alley Insider: ATOS, a France-based international IT services company, is switching all its internal communications from email to IMs and an internal social networking interface.

As ATOS puts it on its website:

The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business. It is estimated that managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week just reading and writing emails. Furthermore, they are already using social media networking more and spend around 25 per cent of their time searching for information.

A Facebook-like (or Google +) interface makes sense for an office - you can post information that now you would send in an email to umpteen different people. With a better interface, you can make the information readily available when it's needed, and the internal company newsletter can become more like a blog or a wiki.

If you go to the SAI article, notice two things: first, the very interesting chart showing the change in web-based email usage by age. Web-based email is only part of the issue, but still the chart shows an interesting dynamic. Second, and perhaps I am late noticing this, the green links in the article are to advertisers.

SAI calls the ATOS move a bombshell, but the news has spawned an interesting public debate on LinkedIn. What do you think? Brilliant move? Marketing move? Mistake?