Most AI teams aren’t losing to the model. They’re losing to bad prompts. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , WWT’s Liz Gattra breaks down the invisible tax of vague instructions, blind trust in outputs and endless iteration loops that quietly burn tokens, waste GPU cycles and drag down ROI. As generative AI moves into production, AI literacy becomes operational leverage — not a soft skill. We cover: • A practical prompt blueprint that improves output quality fast • Why “confident ...
Feb 25, 2026•37 min•Season 1Ep. 68
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 l...
Feb 18, 2026•39 min•Season 1Ep. 67
As enterprises rush to deploy AI, observability is emerging as the discipline that determines whether those investments create durable value—or quietly erode it. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT's Ivan Wintersteiger, Cisco's Tapan Shah and NVIDIA's Shashank Sabhlok discuss why observability, when treated as foundational, becomes the connective tissue between infrastructure, applications, security and user experience. More about this week's guests: Ivan Wintersteiger brings m...
Feb 14, 2026•38 min•Season 1Ep. 66
As organizations move beyond experimentation, compute has become a deciding factor in whether AI delivers real value or stalls before production. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT VP Neil Anderson, NVIDIA VP Chris Marriott and Cisco VP Daniel McGinniss talk about how organizations are rethinking where AI runs, how it's secured and how value is measured. More about this week's guests: Neil Anderson has over 30 years of experience in AI, Software Development, Wireless, Cyber, a...
Feb 13, 2026•50 min•Season 1Ep. 66
As AI systems grow larger and more distributed, enterprises are discovering that performance, security and time-to-value depend less on individual components and more on how well the system moves, synchronizes and protects data at scale. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT's Justin van Schaik, Cisco's Dave Jansen and NVIDIA's Taylor Allison talk about how a well-designed network fabric extends time to value, increases risk and quietly erodes the economics of AI initiatives. Mor...
Feb 12, 2026•35 min•Season 1Ep. 65
As enterprises move AI from experimentation to production, security failures are no longer isolated incidents—they are systemic risks embedded deep in infrastructure, data flows, and decision-making systems. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT's Istvan Berko, Cisco's DJ Sampath and NVIDIA's Ofir Arkin discuss why as AI becomes core infrastructure, security becomes the mechanism that determines whether that infrastructure scales or undermines itself. Support for this episode pro...
Feb 11, 2026•47 min•Season 1Ep. 64
As organizations struggle to move beyond AI pilots, a new architecture — Cisco's Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA — is emerging as a missing link between experimentation and real business outcomes. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT's Neil Anderson, Cisco's Kevin Wollenweber and NVIDIA's Chris Marriott discuss how the Secure AI Factory represents a shift from bolt-on protection to security built into the architecture itself. More about this week's guests: Neil Anderson has over 3...
Feb 10, 2026•43 min•Season 1Ep. 65
As companies move from chatbots to agents, the hardest work isn't prompting — it's building an always-on, governable, cost-aware system that leaders can trust. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Cisco's President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel, NVIDIA Vice President Craig Weinstein and WWT CTO Mike Taylor discuss how Cisco's Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA is designed to close the gap between experimentation and execution by treating AI as infrastructure. More about this week...
Feb 09, 2026•19 min•Season 1Ep. 64
Enterprise AI isn’t failing because of models, tools, or budgets. It’s failing because people don’t actually use it. While most organizations stall after pilots, Ally Financial broke the pattern — reaching over 50% AI adoption with nearly 90% retention. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , Ally Chief Information, Data and Digital Officer Sathish Muthukrishnan joins former Bank of America CTO David Reilly to unpack why adoption is a leadership and culture problem, not a technology o...
Feb 04, 2026•51 min•Season 1Ep. 63
Enterprise AI is moving out of pilots — and the infrastructure gaps are getting harder to ignore. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Intel’s Lynn Comp and WWT’s Mike Trojecki break down why treating enterprise AI infrastructure as a single hardware decision is a costly mistake. As agentic systems push AI into real operations, assumptions like “AI = GPUs” start to crack under pressure from power, cost, governance, and scale. The takeaway from 2025 is clear: performance alone isn’t ...
Jan 28, 2026•31 min•Season 1Ep. 62
Enterprise AI didn’t fail. It hit the wall. In 2025, pilots multiplied, copilots spread, and expectations skyrocketed. Then reality caught up. Scaling AI turned out to be less about model quality — and more about data, security, cost visibility, and how organizations actually work. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Chris Campbell and Jason Campagna break down what enterprises learned the hard way, why most AI initiatives stall between pilot and production, and what leaders must f...
Jan 21, 2026•45 min•Season 1Ep. 61
AI is no longer an experiment — it’s an accountability test. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Dave DeWalt, Founder and CEO of NightDragon, and Kate Kuehn of WWT unpack what happens when AI systems fail, misfire, or create real-world risk — and who ultimately owns the outcome. As organizations look toward 2026, boards want visibility, CEOs want measurable impact, and the lines between IT, security, and the business have disappeared. AI accelerates opportunity, but it also acceler...
Jan 14, 2026•36 min•Season 1Ep. 60
Cyber risk is changing — and AI is accelerating it. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, former NSA Director Rob Joyce joins WWT’s Madison Horn to explain how nation-state cyber activity has shifted from quiet espionage to strategic pre-positioning inside critical infrastructure. AI isn’t introducing new tactics — it’s collapsing timelines. Reconnaissance, phishing, and exploitation now move at machine speed, shrinking response windows from weeks to minutes. The result is a fundamen...
Jan 13, 2026•38 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Enterprise AI just grew up—and the math has changed. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , Francis deSouza, COO of Google Cloud, breaks down why the era of scattered AI pilots is over—and why the winners are moving fast, focused, and top-down. We unpack how leading enterprises are shifting from “let a thousand flowers bloom” to a tight portfolio of high-impact AI use cases that actually ship, scale, and deliver ROI. Francis explains why data strategy—not model choice—is the real com...
Jan 07, 2026•32 min•Season 1Ep. 58
AI is moving faster than the rules designed to govern it—and legal teams are now on the critical path. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , Olivia Fleming, Chief Legal Officer at Edgewood Management, and Erika Schenk, General Counsel and EVP of Compliance at World Wide Technology, unpack how enterprise AI is reshaping the legal function—from gatekeeper to growth enabler. They break down why the biggest risk in AI isn’t black-box models or hallucinations—it’s deploying tools no one ...
Dec 31, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 57
AI is shipping faster than security teams can catch it—and the attack surface is quietly exploding. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Shawn Wormke of F5 and Chris Konrad of World Wide Technology unpack the rise of what they call “naked AI”—enterprise AI systems deployed without proper data controls, API protection, or governance. Drawing on new F5 research, they reveal why only 2% of organizations are truly AI-ready, how shadow AI and exposed interfaces are multiplying risk, and ...
Dec 24, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 56
AI pilots are easy. Enterprise AI at scale is the hard part. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Craig Dillman of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Earl Dodd of World Wide Technology break down how enterprises are moving from experimentation to production-grade artificial intelligence—and why AI Factories are becoming the backbone of modern enterprise AI. Rooted in decades of supercomputing expertise, AI Factories turn artificial intelligence into a repeatable, governed production sys...
Dec 18, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 54
GPUs don’t create value. Enterprise AI does—when it’s built the right way. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, Allen Clingerman of Dell Technologies and Matt Halcomb of World Wide Technology break down why the next phase of enterprise AI won’t be won by chasing GPUs or spinning up one-off pilots—but by building real AI factories grounded in data, strategy, and execution. They introduce Dell’s AI Data Platform as an operating model for production-grade artificial intelligence—one th...
Dec 17, 2025•53 min•Season 1Ep. 54
AI at scale isn’t about more GPUs—it’s about building a system that can keep evolving. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , John Gentry of NVIDIA and Derek Elbert of World Wide Technology explain why AI factories are becoming the backbone of enterprise AI—and why isolated GPU clusters can’t keep up. They break down the factory model for production-grade artificial intelligence: data and power in, intelligence out. But making it work now requires more than compute—enterprises must u...
Dec 16, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Cisco's Nicolas Sagnes and World Wide Technology's Bob Watson outline why the next generation of AI infrastructure must be engineered as a secure, observable, full-stack system — and why enterprises relying on pilots risk falling behind. 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 accelera...
Dec 15, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 52
AI isn’t just changing how software gets written—it’s changing who ships, who scales, and who falls behind. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , Nate McKie and Andrew Brydon of World Wide Technology break down how artificial intelligence and AI coding assistants are reshaping enterprise software development—from real productivity gains and improved data quality to the risks leaders can’t afford to ignore. They cut through the hype to explain which tools actually matter, how to eval...
Dec 10, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 51
As enterprises rush to deploy copilots, automation and secure private AI, energy has become the defining constraint. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, visionary leaders including NightDragon's Dave DeWalt, Morgan Stanley's Jeff Holzschuh and Beacon AI Centers' Josh Schertzer unpack the new reality unfolding across the grid. They reveal why power — not land or fiber — is now the first question in every AI strategy, and what executives must do now to de-risk growth, secure their op...
Dec 06, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of the global economy. Powered by leaps in accelerated computing, digital twins and autonomous systems, a new industrial era is emerging in real time. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, NVIDIA leaders Jay Puri, Charlie Wuischpard and Craig Weinstein break down how the entire AI stack — from the silicon driving breakthroughs to the software shaping intelligent experiences — is redefining how we build, operate and compete. This conversa...
Dec 05, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 49
In this episode, Google Cloud COO Francis deSouza and WWT Co-Founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh talk about how executives are turning artificial intelligence into a true competitive multiplier by building intelligent operations that run faster, cheaper and smarter; create predictive customer experiences that earn real loyalty; and accelerate innovation by embedding AI into every workflow. Editor's Note: This special episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast was recorded during WWT's Business Innovatio...
Dec 04, 2025•50 min•Season 1Ep. 48
As software and data take center stage in the modern enterprise, the combination of purposeful artificial intelligence adoption, skilled teams and disciplined processes is becoming a catalyst for transformation. In this episode, WWT CTO Mike Taylor and Microsoft AI Futurist Marco Casalaina provide real-world examples of how organizations are rethinking data foundations and embedding AI into development and operations to unlock new levels of speed, agility and innovation. Editor's Note: This spec...
Dec 03, 2025•15 min•Season 1Ep. 47
In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT Co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh and Cisco President Jeetu Patel break down the real constraints shaping the AI era and explore why platforms will define the next decade of enterprise innovation. They'll also talk about how secure, scalable architectures enable organizations to innovate confidently and compete at AI speed. Editor's Note: This special episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast was recorded during WWT's Business Innovation Summit...
Dec 02, 2025•46 min•Season 1Ep. 46
The AI Proving Ground Podcast team is proud to kick off a weeklong series of daily releases from WWT's Business Innovation Summit — bringing you unfiltered conversations with the visionary leaders shaping the next decade of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud and enterprise AI strategy. Featuring insights from executives at Cisco, Google Cloud, Microsoft, NVIDIA, NightDragon, Morgan Stanley and more, this series offers urgent, real-time perspective on how AI is transforming the global ...
Dec 01, 2025•4 min•Season 1Ep. 45
AI is no longer a pilot. It’s a prerequisite for survival. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast , Edmondo Orlotti, Chief Growth Officer at Core42 (part of G42), joins Mike Trojecki of World Wide Technology to break down how AI-native nations are being built—and what enterprises must learn before they fall behind. The focus isn’t models or hype—it’s data, sovereignty, and scale. Edmondo explains how national-scale artificial intelligence platforms are designed to operate under regulat...
Nov 26, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Customer expectations are shifting faster than most organizations can respond. In this episode of the AI Proving Ground Podcast, leaders from healthcare, utilities and retail break down how AI is redefining what “good” customer experience looks like — and how their industries are rethinking service models, operational workflows and human touchpoints to keep pace with a new, AI-shaped standard. More about this week's guests: Dr. Eric Quinones is a physician leader committed to the Quintuple Aim—e...
Nov 19, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Back by popular demand, this encore episode breaks down how to turn AI hype into real results. Aritificial intelligence shouldn’t add more work—it should make work smarter. Jon Duren and Jay Custard share how to turn AI hype into real results: integrate it into daily workflows, tie pilots to KPIs, manage adoption like a product and design for trust. A playbook for making AI actually work at work. Support for this episode provided by: Digital Realty Learn more about this week's guest: Jay Custard...
Nov 12, 2025•58 min•Season 1Ep. 42
