You can use perlbrew to install any version of Perl your heart desires in a local directory of your choosing. You can also install multiple versions and easily swap them.
We deploy to a RHEL server where the stock Perl is 5.8.8. Sure, migrating that to a perlbrew/local::lib setup with up-to-date CPAN modules would be really nice, but would require some major testing, and right now nobody has the time for that. Never change a running system sigh...
But hey, generally it's not a big hassle, from a programmer's perspective that version ain't that outdated. About the only thing I really miss is "//="...