Whether sales representatives are talking to CFOs or network administrators, "the focus of the conversation is around business continuity," he said. Qwest is also trying to emphasize some of the security gains inherent to the IPv6 protocol, such as IPsec, as an incentive.
"The key message we give our customers is contrary to some of the hype that is out there. There is no one-size-fits-all [approach], and everyone needs to think very carefully about what the v6 world means to them," Poll said. "I stress this to my own sales force [who are] asking the same questions: How do you talk to customers and convince them to do something different when this is going to cost them some dollars?"
Carriers should be pitching IPv6 migrations as a way for enterprises to get familiar with the technology via incremental upgrades, according to Mike Jude, program manager at Stratecast, a division of Frost & Sullivan.
"You don't want to go in and be the Chicken Little [and say], 'Oh my God, the sky is falling because we just ran out of Block 8 addresses!'" Jude said. "If what you want to do is be alarmist, that's definitely not going to sell this. What I think is more effective is the polar opposite, which is facilitative, and say … 'Now is the perfect time to start getting your feet wet. We'll make the pipes available and we have the experts here to help'."
Service providers may also find success by painting an IPv6 migration as part of an overall infrastructure upgrade, Mazur said.
"Because there's no strong business case, which is the first thing that both the IT and the business people in the enterprise are going to want to hear about, I would pitch it as a general network upgrade story," he said.
"You could say, 'You might as well look at moving to IPv6 as part of a network modernization program, and while you're at it, is there any old equipment in your network? That old stuff is probably ready to go anyway and probably very energy inefficient.'"