... and you expect to get this disk from Livermore to Chicago, in 5 minutes, ... how?

Business moves at Internet speeds these days, in case you hadn't noticed.

To put it in a way even understandable to techies;

Collaborrative document, updated and swapped between 4 authors, and reviewed by two others, widely separated geo-physically. Revised and rewritten 5 times per day, for a week (Not counting NetMeetings). Trust me, management does work this way.

Network Shared storage is the correct solution for most of these issues. Runtime with network shared storage is also 1 week.

Process run-time, with email = 1 week; with FedEx = 1 month.

Process cost (transit only), with email <= $20, with FedEx = $4500 (FedEx = very happy)

Let's see... 4 authors * 35 revisions (7 days 5 revisions each, or 35 days, 1 revision each, assuming revisions wouldn't be reduced by latency) = 140 fedex packages. According to FedEx web site, from 95121 (San Jose, CA) to 20170 (Herndon, VA), it's: $18.34 standard overnight (w/unscheduled pickup) $20.94 priority overnight (w/unscheduled pickup) I get $2567.60 and $2931.60, respectively. Still well over the $20 that it costs with network shared storage or email, but definitely significantly less than your fedex estimate. In fact, I couldn't get close to your estimate on the fedex web site. I was able to find 8am delivery at $6000+, but that's way more than your $4500, and not overly useful in this situation. Admittedly, I didn't try HI to VA, so maybe that's where you got your quote. OTOH, most businesses have contracts with fedex and pay substantially less than the one-time rates I just listed.

Real cost; Deal is blown out because deliverable is three weeks late. Instant lost revenue.

...

my opinion.

opinion: invalid.

Fact: Using e-mail instead of bulk file transfer or network shared storage is an inefficient use of bandwidth with little or no gain in user convenience and only an artificial sense of security. Owen