AI Isn’t a Pilot Anymore: How Cox Scaled It

AI pilots are easy.Scaling AI across a live network is not.As organizations move beyond experimentation, the challenge isn’t better models — it’s building AI that operates like infrastructure: reliable, secure, and measurable.In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Matt Shorts, AVP of AI at Cox Communications, joins WWT’s Greg Schoeny to share how Cox moved AI from isolated pilots into production across a customer-facing network where uptime, trust, and scale matter daily.You’ll learn:Why operating conditions expose bad AI decisions fastHow to modernize without waiting for perfect dataThe risks of rushing into closed platformsWhy momentum beats perfectionHow framing AI as augmentation — not replacement — drives adoptionThis episode is for CIOs, infrastructure leaders, and platform teams responsible for deploying AI in complex, regulated environments.The bottom line: AI only delivers value when it behaves like infrastructure.And infrastructure rewards discipline — not hype.More about this week's guests:Greg Schoeny is Senior Vice President of Services and Strategic Solutions at WWT, leading services sales, business development, and architecture for the Global Service Provider (GSP) business. His team delivers outcome-driven solutions across AI, cloud, security, mobility, automation, and advisory services, supporting customers with professional services, managed services, staffing, and strategic consulting.Matt Cox is a technology leader with 20+ years of experience driving digital transformation and product innovation. He specializes in AI strategy, multi-cloud optimization, and building high-performing teams. Matt has led successful product launches, developed IP strategies, and architected IoT solutions that unlock new revenue and operational efficiency, aligning technology with measurable business impact.The AI Proving Ground Podcast leverages the deep AI technical and business expertise from within World Wide Technology's one-of-a-kind AI Proving Ground, which provides unrivaled access to the world's leading AI technologies. This unique lab environment accelerates your ability to learn about, test, train and implement AI solutions. Learn more about WWT's AI Proving Ground.The AI Proving Ground is a composable lab environment that features the latest high-performance infrastructure and reference architectures from the world's leading AI companies, such as NVIDIA, Cisco, Dell, F5, AMD, Intel and others.Developed within our Advanced Technology Center (ATC), this one-of-a-kind lab environment empowers IT teams to evaluate and test AI infrastructure, software and solutions for efficacy, scalability and flexibility — all under one roof. The AI Proving Ground provides visibility into data flows across the entire development pipeline, enabling more informed decision-making while safeguarding production environments.