Strict, Zero-Email Diet for 80,000 Employees of IT Services Company

Email has been around for decades, before the web was ever invented, and it will likely be around for decades to come. Despite no lack of technologies meant to replace it, from instant messaging to Google Wave, email is here to stay.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of people plotting its demise. More and more people are boasting about giving up on email entirely, replacing it with a mixture of Twitter, Facebook, phone calls and even, gasp, meeting face to face.

But that's nothing compared to the plan of Atos Origin, an European IT services company, which wants to get rid of internal email use entirely in a year and a half.

That doesn't sound that hard at first glance, but Atos has close to 80,000 employees in 40 countries. And all of them are expected to stop using email for internal communications and replace it with instant chat and a social platform.