Lockheed Martin, given its many government customers, began looking at IPv6 seven years ago in its labs. The company is in the midst of a pilot program to convert part of its Global Vision Network to IPv6. So far the program is progressing well, Cuccias says.

“We realize that if our customers are going transition to IPv6, we need to be out in front of the technology,” Cuccias says. The company launched the pilot “to illustrate to our customers that it’s not as simple as buying new IPv6 hardware and turning it on,” he says.

Government agencies are among the earliest adopters of IPv6, largely because of the mandate. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) completed an inventory of its hardware and software, and assessed which were not IPv6-compliant, says CIO Joseph Kraus.

The agency also conducted a network assessment of how IPv6 traffic is transmitted from the Internet and GAO’s private network. “As part of a planned upgrade of our network infrastructure [scheduled for 2008], we included IPv6 compatibility in our specifications,” Kraus says.

During its prep work, the agency learned that its network service providers weren’t able to transmit IPv6 packets and needed to upgrade their infrastructure.

Another potential IPv6 challenge is developing network engineering expertise, says Korn/Ferry’s Demeter. “While IPv6 presents several advantages over IPv4, it requires the engineering and systems operations talent to design, build, and maintain the network to maximize its potential and to justify the investment,” Demeter says. “We have the talent in-house, but we need the time to build the expertise in this new area.”

What’s the bottom line for CIOs outside the government sphere right now? Despite the gradual depletion of IPv4 address space, Gartner’s Willis sees no urgency to adopt IPv6. “There is no real driver besides the IP address shortage,” he says. “What this means is that we’ll be living in a mixed IPv4/IPv6 environment until well past 2013. Fortunately, coexistence of both protocols is easy, although it will drive support costs up while we are in this mixed environment.”

Bob Violino is a New York-based freelance writer. E-mail feedback to letters@cio.com.