Established companies that attempt to stay relevant in the software-defined world while stubbornly clinging to old models will face an uphill journey. Some, like Prince Kohli, VP, head of R&D Ericsson Silicon Valley, head of Development Unit, BU Cloud and IP at Ericsson, say that it’s a two-way street; you have to closely monitor your customers’ changes in order to inform changes in your own company.

“Change is just a part of what we do,” Kohli said, referring to the communications company’s commitment to staying up to date with customers’ evolving needs. He told Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, if you want to be a successful company these days, “You can’t do that without accepting change.”

Keeping pace; setting pace

Kohli said that Ericsson’s customers are facing IT and culture changes at a more rapid rate then ever. “They are having to go from physical devices and proprietary hardware to cloud, to virtualization, to concepts like SPN,” he explained.

He said the happy part is that simply listening to customers is all a company needs to do in order to stay relevant in a competitive marketplace. “What Ericsson is doing, it is transforming itself to support that,” he said. “We have become a very software-oriented DevOps company that allows us to match the pace of our customers and set the pace for the industry.”

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the ACG SV Grow Awards 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE