APAC Leads IPv6 Adoption: Ovum

Research firm Ovum claims that enterprise customers in the Asia Pacific region feel more “urgency” to move to IPv6 than those in other parts of the globe.

That urgency has largely been driven by the recent announcement from APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) that the free pool of IPv4 addresses in the Asia Pacific region has effectively been exhausted, it says.

“The Asia-Pacific is the top growth region in the world, manufactures many electronic devices and many companies see this as their key expanding region. And many enterprise customers are doing business with a vendor/customer in this region which will influence by the faster pace of IPv6 adoption globally,” says Ovum.

Ovum claims that that pressure from players such as telecoms and internet service providers is falling on deaf ears and enterprises in other regions other than Asia Pacific see no need to start the transition to IPv6.

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In a statement, Ovum says that most enterprise customers are continuing to resist pressure from the internet and telecoms industry to migrate to IPv6.

“There may be a degree of ‘head in sand’ mentality among most enterprise customers, [which] stands in glaring contrast to the industry’s efforts to promote IPv6 over the past several years. Furthermore, many enterprise customers think they are already using IPv6, when they are not.”

According to Ovum, one of the major reasons for global enterprises’ lack of urgency is that there are still plenty of IPv4 addresses available, meanwhile issues such as a lack of return on investment and more pressing IT priorities are also playing a part.

Ovum says there are some triggers that will motivate enterprises to make the move. For instance, the growing number of new consumer devices, such as smartphones, that will be assigned IPv6 addresses, and the new web applications that will be accessed by these devices. Asia-Pacific leads the world in IPv6 adoption, enterprises (and their many suppliers) doing business within this region will be influenced to follow suit.