Almost half of email users believe that email is reducing the need for other file storage systems, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Cloud-based email archiving, continuity and security provider Mimecast surveyed 2,500 information workers in the US, UK and South Africa

on their attitudes and frustrations with email.

The findings are part of Mimecast's Shape of Email series, and could help hosted email providers understand how customers are using their

services.Mimecast released a study a few weeks ago that found many organizations are unclear of the industry standards and legal regulations around email archiving and data retention.

The good news for hosted email providers is that customers use email for four hours per day, according to the survey. That means the average worker is spending half their day using their email. With this frequency of use, performance is crucial, and so are search speeds, according

to Mimecast.

Mimecast says 86 percent of users rely on email as a search tool to find documents or information from within their inbox or archive. Email

systems aren’t typically designed for rapid searching, though, so these searches can take two minutes on average. The lack of intelligent

search capability is contributing to the inefficient use of email.On Wednesday,Google introduced advanced search functions in Gmail to help

users find what they are looking for quickly and accurately.

On average, email users receive 32 emails a day, containing 4.5 megabytes of data in total.

“The research shows that the way the average employee uses email at work has changed,” Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder, Mimecast said

in a statement.“For many people,email is no longer just a messaging system.It has become the primary tool for storing,sharing and searching

for information. This is why we are seeing information workers increasingly becoming Inbox Workers; they rely on email for all aspects of their job and spend, on average, 50 percent of their working day using email.”

These findings by Mimecast reflect similar findings from German email security provider eleven in March, which found that 95.2 percent of

German IT decision-markers believe that email will play a long-term role in business communication.

eleven found that less than five percent of respondents think that social networks will replace email communication.

According to Mimecast, email is preferred over social media for all forms of workplace collaboration, and 76 percent say that social media has not reduced the need for email when communicating with colleagues.