On Jul 31, 2008, at 5:52 PM, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ wrote:
> Some considered that part of the delay of the IPv6 deployment was
> due to the lack of communication effort from IETF. I'm not really
> sure about that, however I agree that everything helps, of course.
To be honest, I think IPv6 has been overmarketed.
Badly and inaccurately marketed, you bet. Overmarketed, not really. AFAICT a
heck of a lot of people who really need to know about IPv6 have barely even
heard of it.
Let me ask you a question. When do you buy a new car? If you're at all
like me, you buy a new car when the old one isn't serving your needs
any more. Since buying a new car is a big expense, you put it off as
long as you can.
Sure, but I doubt that you wait until your old car is a pile of unworkable junk
before you even start considering what new car to buy. In fact I bet you pay at
least some attention to what cars are available or will soon be available that
interest you. I know I do.
Marketing isn't necessarily about getting someone to buy something right now.
Indeed, the best marketing campaingns are often ones that work to establish a
brand first, and get people to actually buy that brand second.
I drive a 2001 Prius, a car Toyota started advance marketing almost a year
before it was even available in this country. That advance marketing was so
successful even though I signed up for one as soon as it was possible to do so
I still had to wait four mohths to get it.
But with companies increasingly only looking as far ahead as the next quarter,
it is terribly easy to fall into the trap of not working to set realistic
expectations and establish brands properly. (And don't get me started on the
adverse impact this has on actual products.)
it also doesn't help that good marketing people are, in my experience at least,
much much harder to find than engineering talent. (I'm speaking now as a former
CEO, not as an engineer.)
IPv6 solves a problem service providers will have in 1-2 years. We
knew a decade ago that it would be 1-2 years from now, but with less
precision. A decade ago, the problem it solves wasn't one the service
providers had, so investing in the technology only made sense from a
research or early-adopter perspective. Everyone else put the
investment off.
But IPv6 was heavily marketed. That leaves people saying, now that the
problem is materializing, "yeah, yeah, yeah, been hearing about that
for years."
What they've been hearing for years is a lot of sporadic crying wolf, with the
result that those that have heard of IPv6 have a bad opinion of it. That's
about the worst possible marketing you can do, but it isn't overmarketing.
Ned
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