Gartner's Advice: Stop Deploying BlackBerry

Enterprises should not deploy or invest in Research In Motion's BlackBerry "until RIM's legal position is clarified," market research firm Gartner said this week.

In addition, Gartner urged enterprises to demand that Research In Motion (RIM), which has been struggling in a patent action brought against it by NTP, should publicly detail its plans for a workaround should it loose its suit. Besides getting details on the workaround, enterprises should also "carefully review their legal and operational impact," Gartner said in a research advisory.

RIM has been at the losing end of a string of rulings in the patent dispute.

"The (most recent) ruling strongly suggests that unless RIM reaches a settlement with NTP, the court will issue an injunction effectively ending RIM's operations in the U.S.," Gartner said. "U.S. BlackBerry users would lose messaging services -- though BlackBerry telephones would continue to function -- and international users would lose message service while traveling in the U.S. International businesses with U.S. operations would also be affected."

Gartner predicted that there's six-out-of-ten chance that RIM and NTP will settle the case within three weeks. However, if no settlement is reached, RIM is likely to appeal to the Supreme Court and implement a workaround that would not conflict with the patents in the dispute, Gartner said.Because of the uncertainty, enterprises should "stop or delay all mission critical deployments and investments," the research advisory said. Enterprises should also investigate other ways to make their applications mobile, keeping in mind that those alternatives might also run afoul of NTP's patents.

"Recognize that alternative solutions could cause transition costs that will be unnecessary if the case is settled," Gartner said. "If your applications are not mission-critical, you may choose to take no action as this time, but should still assess the potential impact of operation outages of unknown duration."