But, like Gillman, other IT managers bemoaned the possible loss of RIM's service, saying that they consider rival products to be far behind the BlackBerry in usability.

John Halamka, CIO at Harvard Medical School and several other New England health care organizations, oversees 500 BlackBerry users and relies heavily on RIM's service himself. Halamka said he is so concerned about the possibility of service disruptions that he filed a declaration on Jan. 11 with the U.S. District Court in Virginia describing how valuable BlackBerry devices were as a backup communications system during a 2002 computer outage at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

"BlackBerry service is essential to the clinical operations of Harvard's hospitals," said Halamka, who is a Computerworld columnist. "My server monitoring strategy, my disaster recovery strategy and my personal productivity in my five jobs depend upon the BlackBerry network."

For the past two weeks, Halamka, who receives 600 e-mails daily, has been testing a Palm Inc. Treo 700 device over a Verizon Wireless broadband connection. He said that although the Treo is "perfect" for a low-volume e-mail user, it's not as handy as the BlackBerry for someone who gets as many messages as he does.

Rick Proctor, vice president of IT at Thomas Nelson Inc., a Christian book publisher in Nashville with about 45 BlackBerry users, said RIM's technology has been "a better device for our needs" than other handhelds that the company has tried. Proctor said his staff is talking to Verizon Wireless about a contingency plan.