If you are providing services to Internet, you should be watching the trends on Internet. There are various web sites providing information. The one I want to mention here is ten questions Internet Execs should ask and answer.

Who are your potential customers? It turns out that USA, Russia, China, Brazil and India are the largest Internet markets. So let’s take a look at how they are doing in IPv6:

·        United States: United States government has been pushing IPv6 for some time now. There are several Internet service providers already providing Ipv6 addresses.

·        China: China started planning for Next generation Internet back in 2002. They have fully functional IPv6 backbone and they even provided a showcase with 2008 Olympic games which were provided from IPv6 infrastructure. (The link is IPv6).

·        India: India government has recently decided to implement IPv6. They will be using Ipv6 by 2012 according to an IDC study.

·        Brazil: Brazil has been using Internet through IPv6 for a couple of years. In fact south America has the fastest growing IPv6 address space in the world.

·        Russia: Use of IPv6 has been on the rise for Russia according to research made by Google.

This means that top 5 of largest Internet markets are ready to use IPv6. If you are interested in how much addresses are allocated in each country, there is a list you can check out here.

How are they accessing your site? The fastest growing area is mobile devices. There are around 120 million subscribers using iphone+iTouch+ipad and adding 60 million each year assuming the rate is constant. In just 4 years Japan Social networking switched from desktops (83% desktop/17% mobile in 2006) to laptops (14% desktops/84% mobile in 2010). This means mobile operators will needs lots of IP addresses for those mobile devices and the trend will increase in the near future. Please keep in mind that nearly all mobile platforms currently support IPv6 addresses.

Implementing IPv6 is not the only option for mobile operators as they can still use IPv4 together with NAT. However using such technologies will break certain scenarios such as targeted advertising which is going to be a large market. As long as the infrastructure is ready there will be a shift to IPv6 addresses pretty quickly.

When the end user is using IPv6, they will need extra services for accessing Ipv4 Internet sites. The overwhelmingly used technology is 6to4. This means, your potential customers will need to pass through gateways to access your Ipv4 sites. There will be different services in this space with various degrees of success. There will probably be some IPv4 islands which will not be accessible from IPv6 addresses.

In a short time (probably starting in a year) mobile users will start having Ipv6 address. They will want to access IPv6 based services as they will not need to pay for 6to4 services or hit extra performance penalty. There will be a first mover’s advantage for web sites presenting IPv4 and Ipv6 addresses. The others will slowly or furiously (depending on your area of service) be getting fewer hits every day. For advertisers gathering IPv4 addresses used behind NAT will not provide detailed information so they will choose sites that could give them Ipv6 addresses. There will be less opportunity your site will be chosen for advertisements.

Moving to Ipv6 is not going to happen overnight. However due to increase in mobile devices, Ipv6 will first be used by them. If you currently are or planning to provide services to mobile users, you need to start now or you will start losing customers and advertising income soon.

From time to time I meet customers that are using older operating systems that are not 64-bit. Before I go any further let me give you the perspective:

·         X86 Platform: This is the original PC platform that we used to use back in 1980’s. It has a maximum support for 4 GB RAM.

·         I64 Platform (Itanium): This is the 64-bit platform which appeared first on stage and was modeled after a different architecture. It has support for much higher memory but is only available on expensive hardware. Due to architectural differences it needs to emulate x86 instructions in software and old applications written for x86 run much slower.

·         X64 Platform: This is the 64-bit platform that has now become mainstream. It is using a similar architecture with x86 and can run older applications on hardware. It does support much higher memory. The rest of this blog this is the platform that I will refer to when I use 64-bit.

When we talk about the reason for not moving, it generally boils down to incompatible hardware or software that does not run properly under 64-bit operating systems. I have seen several customers using old fax add-on cards that is leaving them behind and several software that simply refuse to run. Maybe its time you should think of leaving fax as a communications technology. Some of the readers will jump saying that they depend on fax for their everyday operations. Although this seems like a valid reason for not moving to 64-bit, the point is there are valid alternatives both technically and politically that can be used that can help you use 64 bit systems. There is something more subtle but more important than this.

Organizations tend to use technology as long as it works and does not cause any trouble. These technologies become brittle in time and become obstacles to innovation to your business. The way we do business is changing for everyone starting from coffee shops to large enterprises. You can not keep selling the same services and products forever. Nowadays success for organizations is measured by how much profit you are generating from the new products and services you are offering. This means adapting to change should be in your DNA as a company. This includes both planned changes and abrupt changes. If you do not embrace the change, you are losing adaptability to new conditions. If you do not adapt to change, your competition will and you will less likely to be fit and finally you will be extinct. This is the most important lesson organizations should borrow from evolution.

Now the new problem organizations are facing is the rate of change which is increasing even faster each year. In order to remain competitive, you need to have a framework which makes technological change easier. See my earlier post on agile organizations. You should choose the right technology and put necessary processes to track its usefulness. Measuring usefulness can be difficult when you think of implementing this but when you do you will see that most of the technologies are replaceable with better ones after some time even though they are still functioning and providing value. When you change your mind set on change in technology you need to invest on technologies that are modular enough to change when needed easily and seamlessly.

When you are investing in a new technology, you should definitely evaluate the contribution to your business. However you should also think about how adaptable the new technology is to the changing conditions. If it is not, account for this, during in your decision. If you don’t we will have the same conversation when you plan to implement IPv6 or any other disruptive technology on the horizion.