CircleID

IPv6 a major catalyst for billions of dollars worth of deals? The Intel announcement of their McAfee purchase for 7.7 billion seems to indicate as much when Dave DeWalt , McAfee CEO is quoted as saying during a conference call; "If we look at the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, we're seeing an explosion of billions of devices and they all need to be secured." Then he continues by saying "The embedded market is a very specific and high-opportunity market for us." His estimate is that the number of connected devices will grow from one billion to 50 billion within 10 years.

In the meantime Baltimore Gas and Electricity (BGE) signed a contract for the provision of IPv6 based smart readers to equip their 1.2 million customers using a 'secure, end-to-end IPv6 platform for BGE to deliver on operational benefits today while also ensuring tomorrow's energy challenges can be met with a scalable and open platform'.

The same day , September 1st, we see Cisco and Itron sign a strategic agreement to 'develop a standards-based, highly secure technology for full IPv6 implementation of field area communications to support smart metering, intelligent distribution automation and interfaces to the customer premise '.

One day later, september 2nd, Cisco announces the purchase of Archrock, a pioneer of IPv6 implementation for sensor network and smart grids , cofounder of IPSO , the alliance promoting IP for small objects, and strong proponent of the IETF 6lowpan recommendation which defines the use of IPv6 for low powered objects.

There is definitely an IPv6 smell in the air these late summer days. 

By Yves Poppe, Director, Business Development IP Strategy at Tata Communications. (Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these articles are solely those of the author and are not in any way attributable to nor reflect any existing or planned official policy or position of his employer in respect thereto.)

Related topics: IPv6, Mobile