IPv6: Managed Services Opportunity or Pure Hype?
World IPv6 Launch Day is June 6. It sounds like ISPs, cloud services providers (CSPs) and web companies — including Akamai, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo — are rallying to “permanently enable” IPv6 for their products and related services by June 6. Jumping on the bandwagon, SolarWinds today launched version 3.o of its IP Address Manager (IPAM) — which can help MSPs to develop IPv6 migration plans for customers. Should MSPs jump in?
In addition to SolarWinds, companies like Infoblox and Bluecat Networks (among others) also sell IPv6 migration solutions. The big questions:
- Can MSPs actually profit from IPv6 customer deployments?
- Does IPv6 offer additional upside benefits to MSPs?
- Or is the World IPv6 Launch Day more of a marketing hype event?
SolarWinds, for one, seems to see IPv6 revenue opportunities for MSPs. The company’s IPAM 3.0 release claims to give “IT professionals detailed visibility and management of their IP infrastructures, helping them better manage their networks and minimize downtime.”
The upgrade also allows MSPs to centrally manage Microsoft DHCP servers, while monitoring Microsoft DNS and Cisco DHCP services. SolarWinds points to ever-increasing endpoints — mobile devices, virtualized services, IP telephony and more — that will need to be managed in an IPv6 world.
Still, only about 3 percent of domain names and 12 percent of network on the Internet offered IPv6 protocol support as of October 2011, according to Mike Leber, an IPv6 expert. But the U.S. Federal Government is starting to require IPv6 support on IT equipment, plus cell phone carriers have been promoting IPv6 support mandates for smart phones since around 2009.
How far along are top MSPs with IPv6? I’ve got a confession: I don’t know. And I also don’t know if major manged services software providers and RMM (remote monitoring and management) software providers offer IPv6 migration/support tools for their MSPs. But I’m all ears.
JP, good reminder of the importance of events like this. If a MSP is a marketing/sales driven organization they will continue to look for reasons to touch their clients and events such as this are great. I subscribe to a publication that provides a calendar for event driven marketing activities. “National Talk Like A Pirate Day” was my favourite. We would send out a newsletter full of pirate stories and videos to shows such as Pirates of the Caribbean. It was all fun however it creates stickiness with clients outside to the traditional day-to-day stuff.
Stuart Crawford
MSP Consultant
Toronto, ON
Another side note JP – June 1 is National Donut Day…what a great reason to reach out to your clients. Read about it..
Stuart: So, um, I just got home from Dunkin’ Donuts (a US chain) about 5 minutes ago. Consuming coffee now while reading your comment #2.
Yes, I agree with Comment 1 — ride the event wave that bigger vendors (Google, etc.) build for you. But I still don’t know if there’s money in IPv6 for MSPs…
-jp
JP…enjoy your DD, I go to one in Niagara Falls, NY all the time. About 10 miles from my home here in St. Catharines. Even with a Tim Horton’s around the corner…nothing beats DD. I don’t know if there is any direct revenue…but heck, how about an IPV6 readiness review. Maybe use it as a marketing campaign to go against the trunk slammers out there.
Funny you should mention Niagara Falls. An upcoming destination…
-jp
First sentence has a mistake: Launch day is actually June 6th, 2012 (UTC). That’s June 5th in America.
Jason: Thanks for the correction. All fixed. Does the launch day interest you or do you view it as hype?
-jp
You should look at what http://www.dts.net.nz are doing. They have been leaders in ipv6 rollout in New Zealand.
Hayden,
Thanks for that link. Do you represent them?
-jp
JP..call me when you get to NFNY…It takes me 15 minutes to get there. 416.827.5339. Honey’s is an awesome place to go for Wings, Pizza and of course…ROLLING ROCKS!!!
Stuart Crawford
The Online DNS Tools site http://www.unlocktheinbox.com/ has IPv6 Friendly Tools.
Stuart@10: Conformed
-jp
Anecdotal Comment:
I worked with one of my Kaseya Partners on an IPv6 POC for a very large gov’t organization back in 2006. They were mandated to be IPv6 compliant within a year. The gov’t was averaging 4 machines per day during their testing, we deployed Kaseya to around 2500 machines, ran a script and finished the update in a matter of hours. 6 years later and the gov’t agency still hasn’t moved forward with the project.
Max Pruger
Kaseya Sales Director
PacketTrap has fully supported IPv6 for well over a year now. Glad the launch day finally arrived. PacketTrap was used in the NOC center at InterOp 2011 where IPv6 was a big part of the buzz. In preparation, we had it ready to go months ahead and available for our partners to use as needed. The usage of IPv6 continues to be a trending topic so we’re happy to have our solution ready to address the transition. JP…See you at Community Live.
Max@13: Your comment depressed me a bit. But, I appreciate such a clear reality check. Thanks for taking the time to post it.
Brian@14: I know IPv6 is a trending topic. But I wonder if IPv6 is a trending deployment…?
Best
-jp