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Central University E-mail Account SPAM Management

The University of Minnesota's central e-mail service managed by OIT includes SPAM management tools. These tools are user controlled and set to defaults that prevent SPAM from servers that are known originators of SPAM.

The following is an auditable scenario representing an extremely conservative approach to Institutional savings for this technology/service/initiative.

Assumptions
The following assumptions are based on institutional metrics and reports which are then used to drive the ROI metric below. Where reports are not available, an intuitive assumption has been made. In this scenario, the intuitive—but conservative—assumption is the amount of time that it might take for the average person to recognize SPAM and delete it.

  • Central e-mail services account for approximately 65-70% of the Institution's e-mail volume. Much is still distributed.

  • In the first year of this service, OIT blocked 1.5M SPAM messages per week—or 78M per year—intended for University central e-mail accounts. OIT is currently in the second year of providing this service—and on track to block 208M SPAM messages this year.

  • It is assumed that the average person would require one second to recognize that an e-mail message is actually SPAM and hit the "delete" button.

  • The average salary & fringe rate at the University is roughly $27/hr.

Costs
OIT is using open-source and locally written software to combat SPAM at the University of Minnesota's central e-mail "border." Technologist labor accounts for almost all of the costs for both implementation and continuing maintenance for this service. These costs are summarized in the "ROI Index" section below.

Impact/Savings/Institutional Value
The University of Minnesota's SPAM management strategy and technologies are saving the institution both time and energy—which can be quantified in terms of worker productivity costs to the Institution. Some may argue that the one-second time assumption is too low—and not realistic. Multiplying the approximations in this section by the seconds that the reader feels are more realistic will demonstrate the value—in order of magnitude—that this service adds to the institution.

  • Approximately 21K hrs per yr which represents:

  • Roughly the equivalent of 10 FTE in human resource productivity

  • Roughly $550K per yr in potential lost productivity savings.

ROI Index
The following matrix reflects the running total of annual savings and corresponding annual costs to derive the ROI Index.

1-Year

3-Year

5-Year

Savings

$550K

$4.45M

$9.3M

Costs

$137K

$329K

$533K

ROI Index

4.01

13.51*

17.45*

* 3-Year Projection based on 2nd year growth and current trends. 5-Year projection based on very low increase in SPAM and will be calculated at 3rd year.

Probing Questions

  • Are units who are managing their own e-mail servers filtering SPAM? If not, are there unrealized savings/productivity gains as a consequence?

  • What are the distributed costs for duplicating SPAM management services where units are not using central e-mail services?

  • What potential cost and productivity savings could realized if everyone used the central e-mail services and decommissioned the distributed model?