Cox Communications has hired Rob Smallwood, formerly with Microsoft and Level 3 Communications, as vice president of enterprise development.
Smallwood reports to Cox chief technology officer Kevin Hart, another ex-Level 3 executive who joined the cable operator in April 2011 after serving as chief information officer at Clearwire.
Smallwood is tasked with providing strategic direction for applications and systems development and maintenance of current and future technologies used to support Cox services and operations. He also will identify new technologies and tools to support and improve operations and data delivery across the enterprise.
Most recently, Smallwood led Microsoft's premier services for the telecommunications and media sector. In this role, he supported the company's North American market and acted as strategy leader for cloud based application development, outsourcing and hosting solutions, including premier support for Microsoft IPTV.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Smallwood spent three years in senior technology leadership positions at Level 3. He also was a leader in the operations support systems practice at Ernst & Young Management Consulting/Capgemini, where he worked on projects with a variety of customers including a significant number of the world's telecommunication software vendors and service providers.
