In an extraordinary move, French IT giant Atos, with over 80,000 employees in 42 countries, including India, will soon ban e-mails since 90 per cent of them are a waste of time. Atos believes that too many of them waste hours dealing with irrelevant e-mails, so wants them phased out within 18 months.

Instead the company want people to spend more time talking to each other - either on the phone or in person - and to use tightly controlled "real time" messaging interfaces. Thierry Breton, Atos's chief executive officer who is a former French finance minister, said the "zero e-mail" policy could be in place within a year-and-a-half. "It is not right that some of our fellow employees spend hours in the evening dealing with their e-mails," Breton was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

Claiming that only 20 out of every 200 emails received by his staff every day turn out to be important, Breton said: "The e-mail is no longer the appropriate tool. It is time to think differently." "The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face," he said.

He said the main problem was people switching to a 'useless' email while they were carrying out a far more important task. Allowing e-mails to stack up also means that staff has huge e-mail workloads to pile through when they get home.

Breton suggested that a real time messaging interface as available on sites like Facebook would be far preferable to email, with staff also encouraged to talk to each other in person. "Companies must prepare for the new wave of usage and behaviour," he said, adding that he always preferred proper conversations. "If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message," said Breton. "Emails cannot replace the spoken word."