Homeinsights[expert insight] AI beyond the buzzword: our pragmatic approach
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[expert insight] AI beyond the buzzword: our pragmatic approach

David Kossovsky, Senior Consultant Itecor · November 03, 2010

Today, we are sharing some expert insight that delves into the heart of innovation. Artificial intelligence is a hot topic in business conversations, often with more marketing hype than real substance. Here, we are choosing to put expertise first. This article is aimed particularly at specialists, but everyone will discover the excellence and rigour that fuel our projects on a daily basis.

a conscious test-and-learn approach

We are currently in a phase of intensive experimentation with AI solutions self-hosted on our own servers in Switzerland. This approach allows us to work on our confidential data while understanding the technological workings from end to end, from hardware to user interface, without external dependencies.

hardware

We are investing in professional hardware suitable for AI workloads with DGX Spark servers and then probably DGX Station from NVIDIA. These systems will offer us:

  • The DGX Spark, equipped with the NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell superchip, delivers up to 1 petaflop of AI performance in a compact form factor with 128 GB of unified memory.
  • We are closely monitoring the DGX Station and await the release of the GB300 chips, details of how they work, and their dependence on an external GPU.

This infrastructure should enable us to develop and test AI models with up to 200 billion parameters locally, with the possibility of connecting multiple systems to process even larger models.

We have chosen to invest in architectures based on Grace Blackwell superchips, such as the DGX Spark (1 petaflop, 128 GB of unified memory), in order to benefit from unique CPU/GPU convergence and optimise the massive processing of AI models. We favour unified NVIDIA hardware because of the ease of integration offered by CUDA, anticipating a real technological breakthrough that we believe in.

We are not investing time in AMD architectures at this stage because, in order to leverage the NPUs of Ryzen AI Max+, the FastFlowLM backend must be used instead of Ollama, although the most interesting performance still comes from the integrated iGPU for large models.

backend

We are focusing on the Ollama backend, and our tests are concentrated on several leading open-source models:

  • Mistral AI (Pixtral 12B and Pixtral Large 124B). Pseudo-open source model.
  • Llama 4 (Scout and Maverick versions). Pseudo-open source model. Recent news about the model’s politicisation makes us wary of it.
  • OpenAI’s GPT-OSS (120B version optimised for self-hosting)
  • EPFL/ETH model due to be released in late August 2025 – early September 2025. We are awaiting benchmarks

We are testing cutting-edge open source models, including Mistral AI (high-capacity multimodal models), Llama 4 (Mixture of Experts architecture supporting up to several million tokens), OpenAI’s GPT-OSS optimised for self-hosting, and the Swiss model developed by EPFL/ETH, which is due to be released imminently. Our aim is not to build our own models, but to continually deepen our expertise through contact with innovations from the open source community.

frontend

We are looking for solutions that go beyond an ergonomic user portal to enable easy management of different users and their rights. We also expect a frontend to be able to leverage on-premise or cloud models and provide fine-grained API access management, as well as build RAG on large document corpora without having to expose them. We have started testing with Ollama Web UI, but we are actively testing alternatives such as LibreChat, AnythingLLM, LobeChat, and Text Generation Web UI.

business integrations in progress

Our initial integration tests are focused on our internal tools: We are exploring integration with Microsoft 365 to automate workflows, as well as Salesforce.

why this approach

This strategy allows us to:

  • Control our data: everything remains within our infrastructure for the handling of confidential data
  • Understand the technology: we continue to develop real expertise. We make it our duty to keep up with the many developments each week
  • Test without risk: experiments are carried out in our controlled environments. For example, we can handle large amounts of personal data in full compliance with the Data Protection Act.

our future positioning

  • Understand the limitations: know how to assess the limitations of AI tools on the market and their real operating costs. Some processes do not necessarily require AI. We are developing methodologies and tools to rigorously measure the added value of AI compared to simple automation, in order to avoid over-qualification
  • Preparing for the future: these tests will enable us to provide you with our expertise and support you in your AI strategy and its implementation in your business processes

our future positioning

We will get back to you when our level of expertise has progressed further and we have concrete examples to present to you. The aim is to offer you proven solutions, with authentic feedback on their real added value. Our mission is to help our clients choose the best models for their use cases and how to integrate them.

No marketing promises, just concrete information based on our experience in the field.

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