To help Italy’s partner ecosystem build irskills for responsible AI adoption, Computer Gross launched the watsonx® Competence Center— an internal investment dedicated to advancing generative AI across the Italian market.
Computer Gross is helping Italian organizations move from AI interest to AI impact. In this interview from IBM TechXchange, the company shares how watsonx.data® and a dedicated watsonx Competence Center are preparing partners across Italy for the next era of trusted AI.
Computer Gross is one of Italy’s most established solution-oriented distributors and a long-standing IBM collaborator. For decades, the company has supported thousands of Italian organizations as they adopted new technology and modernized their systems. Today, its focus is squarely on AI and on the data foundation that makes it useful and reliable.
At IBM TechXchange 2025, we spoke with Davide Bagnoli, Team Leader for Cloud and AI at Computer Gross, about how the company is helping its partner ecosystem navigate this shift. Our conversation highlighted how central data and skills enablement have become in the Italian AI landscape.
“We work with data every day,” Davide said. “It gives us insight into the market and helps us understand where our partners need support.”
Computer Gross collaborates with nearly three hundred IBM Business Partners across Italy. These partners range from large system integrators to small specialist teams, including boutique firms with deep expertise in topics like AI, cloud and security. No matter their size, they all share the same challenge: keeping pace with rapidly changing AI technology.
To help Italy’s partner ecosystem build the skills needed to adopt AI responsibly, Computer Gross created the watsonx Competence Center. This significant internal investment is dedicated to advancing generative AI across the Italian market.
Their mission, in their own words, is to: “Promuovere l’utilizzo dell’AI Generativa nel mercato italiano, facilitando lo sviluppo degli use case allineati ai diversi settori di industria.” (Translated: “Promote the adoption of generative AI in the Italian market and help develop use cases aligned to industry sectors.”)
Davide explained how the Competence Center strengthens collaboration across the ecosystem: “If you are a small partner, you might not have the full set of skills to lead a complex AI project on your own. The Competence Center puts partners in contact with each other so they can share expertise and grow together.”
With structured training, certifications and direct access to IBM technology, the center is becoming a catalyst for AI readiness across Italy.
As Italian businesses digitize their operations, they generate vast volumes of data across different tools and formats. Most organizations recognize the value of this information but struggle to use it effectively for AI. Here is where watsonx.data has become essential to Computer Gross’s strategy.
“watsonx.data brings different types of data together in a format that is ready for AI,” Davide said. “It prevents silos and lets you use your information for actual projects.”
With watsonx.data, partners can bring together structured data—such as databases and application tables and unstructured content, including documents, PDFs or logs inside a single, governed lakehouse environment. This unified approach reduces data silos and complexity, improves data quality and creates a consistent path toward AI-ready data across hybrid cloud environments. By simplifying access, governance and preparation, watsonx.data helps partners accelerate analytics, model training and AI development with a trusted data foundation.
Davide spent time in the watsonx.data hands-on labs during TechXchange and emphasized the importance of AI platforms supporting different user preferences. Data scientists often prefer a clear visual interface, while developers and architects favor automation and command-line workflows.
“Different practitioners work in different ways,” Davide said. “watsonx.data provides both a clean UI and the option to automate through the command-line. The improvements over the past year have been significant.”
This dual approach makes it easier for partners to adopt the platform and integrate AI into their existing processes.
Looking ahead, Davide believes that AI agents will become a powerful way to automate work and embed intelligence across applications. He compared the future of AI to the way software has traditionally been built breaking complex problems into manageable parts that can be reused and adapted. But agents require dependable information as their foundation.
“Models alone are toys without good data,” Davide said. “Many companies maintain information across databases and file shares but fail to use it. With watsonx.data, everything comes together. You can then unlock the value.”
By preparing the data foundation and encouraging partners to explore agent-based approaches, Computer Gross is helping Italian businesses build AI that is practical, scalable and aligned to real needs.
Computer Gross is already seeing strong results from its investment in AI. The company earned the Netcomm Award for its innovative use of IBM watsonx Assistant on its B2B commerce platform. This recognition reflects what can happen when AI is applied with a strong data strategy.
What stands out is the company’s commitment to helping the Italian ecosystem progress beyond experimentation. Through the watsonx Competence Center, watsonx.data and close collaboration with IBM, Computer Gross is building a foundation for trustworthy AI adoption across Italy.
The full interview with Davide Bagnoli below captures this momentum and illustrates how AI is shaping new possibilities for partners and customers.
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