“Research In Motion Ltd. customers from GoDaddy Group Inc. to asset manager Thames River Capital UK Ltd. are preparing for the worst: the loss of the BlackBerry service their employees depend on to communicate,” Scott Moritz and Olga Kharif report for Reuters. “Corporate customers, the backbone of RIM’s business, are fortifying contingency plans so they won’t be affected by a possible breakup of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd., or other setbacks. ‘In the past three months there’s been a lot of concern that the BlackBerry platform won’t be around in the future,’ said Maribel Lopez, founder of Lopez Research, a wireless- industry consultant based in San Francisco. ‘It’s not unheard of for a large phone manufacturer to go out of business.’”

“Corporate customers, the backbone of RIM’s business, are fortifying contingency plans so they won’t be affected by a possible breakup of the BlackBerry-maker or other setbacks. With millions of employees connecting to the office through mobile e- mail, companies have been eager to establish a fallback or replacement plan, said Avi Greengart, a technology research director at Current Analysis,” Moritz and Kharif report. “Thames River Capital supplies about 140 of its 170 employees with smartphones, most of them BlackBerrys, said Robert Cockerill, head of infrastructure at the London-based money manager. With the delay of BlackBerry 10 and a service contract with RIM expiring this year, Cockerill said he expects much of his staff to switch to Apple Inc.’s iPhone… Norton Rose LLP, a law firm with 6,000 BlackBerry-equipped employees, is using MobileIron’s software to support iPhones and iPads, which were given to some staff members as secondary devices, said Vlad Botic, group enterprise architect at the London-based firm.”

Moritz and Kharif report, “The migration from BlackBerrys started two years ago for Ken Lawonn, senior vice president of strategy and technology at Alegent Health, an Omaha, Nebraska-based health-care provider… ‘Should something occur, we believe that’s going to be a fairly easy transition,’ Lawonn said. ‘If my BlackBerry broke down, I’d look at the options, and if a BlackBerry wasn’t available, I’d pick up an iPhone and be on my way.’”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]