The rapid growth in quantum computing over the past five years has been exciting, even though the progress was largely confined to research rooms. However, in the last 2-3 years, quantum computing has gathered pace with several big techs declaring their quantum supremacy and many others joining the bandwagon through partnerships and collaborations.
The recent company to join the quantum fray is IT major Infosys which announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities and use cases. Infosys will use Amazon Braket to explore and build multiple use cases in quantum computing as part of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings. Amazon Braket is a fully managed quantum computing service that helps scientists and developers get started with the technology and accelerate research and discovery.
Infosys will look to build, test, and evaluate quantum applications on circuit simulators and quantum hardware technologies using Amazon Braket. This will enable researchers and developers to experiment and study complex computational problems as quantum technologies continue to evolve.
Enterprises will get access to use cases for rapid experimentation and can explore how quantum computing can potentially help them in the future in a variety of areas, assess new ideas and plan adoption strategies to drive innovation. The use of Amazon Braket by Infosys aims at getting businesses ready for a future where quantum computers will impact business.
The Infosys Center for Emerging Technology Solutions (iCETS), which focuses on the incubation of next-generation services and offerings, is using Amazon Braket to develop quantum computing use cases in vehicle route optimization, fraud detection, and more.
Infosys is also exploring partnership opportunities with startups in the quantum computing space through the Infosys Innovation Network (IIN). This collaboration further bolsters Infosys Cobalt, a set of services, solutions, and platforms for enterprises to accelerate their cloud journey. It offers 14,000 cloud assets and over 200 industry cloud solution blueprints.
“Infosys continues to be at the forefront of exploring and bringing new technologies to clients. Through our use of AWS in this space, we are bringing together the power of Amazon Braket and Infosys Cobalt to help enterprises build quantum computing capabilities and use cases to accelerate their cloud-powered transformation,”Ravi Kumar S, President, Infosys, mentioned.
“We are exploring a variety of use cases from the logistics, finance, energy, and telecom sectors that can help clients evaluate future benefits and value that quantum computing could bring to their business. Enterprises can look forward to solving their various complex computational challenges with Infosys Cobalt and Amazon Braket,” he added.
Analysts believe, quantum computers may now come one step closer to reality to solve certain real-life business problems that are beyond the capability of conventional computers. The quantum race is already underway Governments and private investors all around the world are pouring billions of dollars into quantum research and development. Satellite-based quantum key distribution for encryption has been demonstrated, laying the groundwork for a potential quantum security-based global communication network. IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and other companies are investing heavily in developing large-scale quantum computing hardware and software.
There’s a sea of opportunities before CIOs and IT departments with quantum computing experiments being applied into the real-world settings. It could also significantly reduce time to market, as well as optimize customer delivery. For example, a pharmaceutical company might significantly reduce the time to market for new drugs. In finance, it could enable faster, more complex Monte Carlo simulations, such as trading, trajectory optimization, market instability and price optimization strategies, and many more.
Quantum computers are also ideally suited for solving complex optimization tasks and performing fast searches of unsorted data. This could be relevant for many applications, from sorting climate data or health or financial data, to optimizing supply chain logistics, or workforce management, or traffic flow. Several organizations are already using the same to solve real world critical problems. For example, the banking enterprises are trying to addresses the challenges like portfolio optimization, risk analysis, fraud detection, market predictions with the help of quantum computers.
Like, Barclays and JP Morgan Chase partnered with IBM, NatWest has aligned with Fujitsu to bring the technology to real-life usage. Another example for quantum computers’ use is traffic optimization as was done by Volkswagen with D-Wave tries to solve the problem of traveling salesman and their efficiency.
According to Allied Market Research, by 2023, 20% of organizations, including businesses and governments, are expected to budget for quantum-computing projects, up from less than 1% in 2018. However, significant practical challenges need to be overcome before this level of large-scale impact is achievable. Gartner researchers believe that currently, there’s a vast gap to be bridged before quantum computers can do more meaningful things — such as simulating the properties of materials or chemical reactions, or accelerating drug discovery or even step up the network security of enterprise. Another major hurdle to scaling up the technology is the issue of dealing with errors.
Kiran Raj, Principal Disruptive Tech Analyst at GlobalData, believes, “Albeit a far cry from the large-scale mainstream use, quantum computers are gearing up to be a transformative reality. While challenges exist, quantum computers will continue to progress into the future where companies may rent them to solve everyday problems – the way they currently rent cloud services. “It may not come as a surprise in the near future that quantum computing becomes the mainstream technology to help industries tackle problems they never would have attempted to solve before, Raj says.
Matt Garman, Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Amazon Web Services, Inc, said, “Quantum Computing is an area of intense research, and a number of businesses around the world are asking about its timeline and the opportunities that it could open. At this stage, it’s important to be aware and evaluate the potential future impact of quantum computing.
Infosys, a long-standing for AWS Premier Consulting Partner, has experience in incubating emerging technology solutions. Garman sees this collaboration as an important step towards setting the right expectations when discussing business problems with customers where quantum computing could have a role.”
