In 2005, approximately 38 percent of e-mail messages sent in North America will be spam, IDC says. According to researchers, 12 billion spam messages will be sent each day in North America, as well as 13 billion person-to-person e-mails and 6 billion e-mail alerts and notifications.

However, e-mail users and IT workers are having success in handling spam. One of the biggest challenges organizations now face is ensuring users manage e-mail content to meet corporate governance and regulatory compliance requirements, according to IDC. The rise in e-mail volume and the e-mail retention policies spelled out in government and industry regulations are driving up the cost of storing and managing e-mail data. IDC says the total volume of business e-mail sent last year topped 1 million terabytes for the first time.

Companies should apply the knowledge they've gained and the investments they've made fighting spam to satisfying governance and compliance requirements, says Mark Levitt, research vice president for IDC's collaborative computing service.

Spam concerns remain

A report from Osterman Research suggests companies are still having trouble getting the spam situation under control. Two-thirds of participants ranked the amount of spam their organization receives as a serious problem. More than half also said the time their e-mail administrators spend dealing with spam is also a serious concern.

In the same survey, slightly more than a quarter of U.S. organizations and almost half of non-U.S. organizations said the U.S. government should be primarily responsible for reducing spam by passing and enforcing legislation, as most spam originates in the United States. When asked if there should be a single set of worldwide antispam laws for stopping and prosecuting spammers, 42 percent of U.S. organizations and 55 percent of non-U.S. organizations said yes.

The majority of both groups agreed that technology will be more effective than laws in fighting spam.