Gates serves up antidote for 'information underload'

In his open email to business managers Gates said that businesses were flooded with information, but do not have the tools to use it.

In Bill's little email of calm, he does not think that businesses faced with the endless "deluge of data that is generated every second of every day" can solve the problem with a lilac bath, a bottle of wine and deep breathing.

That will not help those workers who spend up to a third of their time searching for things which have gone astray in their computers or on the Interweb.

Gates said that it is no good just having a few good search tools, which is just as well really because at the moment Vole has not got one of them to peddle.

"What's required is a comprehensive approach to enterprise information management that spans information creation, collection and use and helps ensure that organisations can unlock the full value of their investments in both information and people," Bill said.

We are not sure what he means here. For example, Mrs Farrell is always losing her hairclips. Following Bill's grand plan we have instituted a comprehensive management policy which reviews all possible locations for hairclip loss and yet we have been unable to leverage the full value of our hairclip investment.

Bill's email says that Vole has spent a lot of cash on Research and Development and within the next ten years will come up with some pretty neat things that will enable data to be more effectively mined. We hope this will be a little more substantial than saying things like "where did you last see your file?"

You can read the email here. µ