Toward Business Value with Quantum
Hey, welcome back. My name is Scott Crowder, and I'm happy to kick off this session focused on how we are building towards business value with quantum computing. As mentioned this morning, we have entered an era of quantum utility. As a result, our offerings are changing for this new era. Our first step is to make available 100 qubit or larger systems in all of our Qiskit runtime as a service plans.
These cloud services, whether our open plan, which provides up to 10 minutes per month for free to explore quantum computing or pay as you go service, or a reserved capacity premium plan will now all be based on access to utility scale systems. Our next step is a change to our premium plan in early 2024. We aim to give more clarity on how much reserve capacity is acquired under this popular plan. We are introducing the quantum allocation unit, which is equivalent to 1600 minutes of reserve capacity over a 28 day rolling window.
The pricing for the new QAU premium plan will be set at one half of the cost of our pay as you go plan. Finally, we're making it clear that we offer a dedicated service where Qiskit Runtime service is provided from a dedicated utility scale system that is still managed by IBM, but can be co-located at client locations. We're also updating how we build quantum skills for this next era of utility. We've introduced the new IBM Quantum Learning Platform, which is the new home to learn and experiment with quantum algorithms and applications.
We've done an amazing job of helping drive interest in quantum computing and supporting the basic skills needed for quantum information science, With over 700 classes using IBM Quantum, and approaching 8 million learners reached with our open education content. But it's time to expand to build the skills needed for business utility. And therefore we have updated our platform to include content for our network partners to build both business and technical skills and deeper technical enablement on how computational and data scientists can apply quantum computing for utility scale work. Another key aspect of driving adoption of quantum computing for business utility is our larger set of partners who share our vision to bring quantum to industry. You heard from some of them earlier during the technical presentations.
As an industry, we will not be successful without a strong ecosystem of quantum native startups, global system integrators, cloud providers and application vendors. We thank you for partnering with us in this endeavor. We are also expanding our global ecosystem. In 2024, our first Europe based quantum data center will be operational with multiple utility scale systems delivering our Qiskit Runtime service through our pay as you go and premium plans as well as through business partners such as T-Systems.
So now we would like to introduce Jörn Kellermann Senior Vice President of Global Technology and Portfolio Excellence, to tell us more about how T-Systems is working to grow the quantum ecosystem in Europe. Thank you so much and thanks for the introduction. And I would like to start with a bit of our North Star.
So why we are engaging in here and what's driving us. And I want to use a bit of a history where we have done something amazing with tech, and that was to perform Beethoven's Tenth Symphony two years back, I think two and a half years back. And I think some of you will know that Beethoven never did a Tenth Symphony. There was just nine, and then he started and then unfortunately he was not able to make it to a tenth. And what we did two years ago was to use A.I.
to finish that symphony, and not only to finish it on paper, but then really working with musicians to be able to perform and play it. And you can watch a super great movie on how we did that and what the musicians thought about that one and then performing that on stage. And why do I pick that example? The reason is to me, that combination of something that is out there for a while, like the remainders of the thoughts of Beethoven had been around for more than 100 years. And also, A.I. is not a technology that was invented two years ago or was there.
But that combination of deep tech was something that was there and make it something that is usable for others. That to me was the amazing thing that we have been doing when we did that. And that's actually also how we think about quantum and why we are engaging in quantum computing, because we can clearly see and I think today we have seen great presentations and great insight making it real that there will be a point in time when we will have real quantum advantage, no doubt, and to prepare for that one. It does not only mean to build great technology as IBM is doing, it does not only mean to get that technology into projects, but you need to make it in a way that it's accessible for people and we like to think about that one as democratizing the access towards quantum to make quantum computing as a super interesting technology available to many, many people out there to deliver great results. And yes, there's also an exciting element in there.
I always like that picture due to the cyberpunk aesthetics and due to the whole technology advantage it's demonstrating. But finally, the approach that we are driving and what's important to us is to use on a lower level the great outcome of commercially available systems that you can really use to build meaningful projects and then on top make it easier to use. And we can build on the great works of Qiskit Runtime and other elements. But still for many people, you need to put that into an easier way of use. And we are doing that on a technology side such as systems. Deutsche Telecom is investing significantly into technology, into the ecosystem.
We are investing significantly into partner networks to make that accessible. And I'll talk about that in a second, but also giving space and room for people to explore, to use, to research. So, for example, we have a quantum lab in Berlin. We have opened six months ago where we invite people just to collaborate, to co-create and to use the power of quantum computing. And our thinking is very much around the network. I don't think that the quantum revolution or quantum advantage can be built just by one player in that market.
So we are open, we are inviting other partners. We are working with a lot of great partners already in that ecosystem to really have a European approach, both from a from an end user point of view, but also from the technology we provide and democratizing that access. And we are super happy to be able to do that with a great partner like IBM, where we can leverage the whole technical advantage and we want to invite everybody to join us in that journey to lower entry barriers democratizing quantum and giving access to that great technology to as many people as possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Jörn. And now I would like to introduce Heather Higgins to the stage to talk to you a little bit more about what we're doing with enterprise engagement and to bring some of our close friends and partners to the stage to talk about what they're doing. Heather Thanks, Scott. You know, it's really hard to be the first act after lunch, so I'm glad Jörn and Scott got us started. I lead the industry and technical services team. My team is the voice within IBM Quantum of the commercial enterprise.
Today we have more than 60 active industry engagements, 60 industry clients that are engaging with quantum compute across our IBM Quantum Network. As a group, these organizations are focused across all three broad application areas simulating nature, advanced mathematics and complex data structures along with search and optimization. Here we have a view of some of our strategic industry partners representing the industry area, the application areas of their interest. These reflect the current industry dynamics along with enterprise specific opportunities, and reflect the representative breadth of interest areas across enterprise organizations. As technology advances and as the market evolves, it's a common theme that you're hearing throughout the day. So do our offerings. Within IBM, a primary way that we engage enterprise
clients is there were IBM Quantum Accelerator offering first introduced in 2021, Quantum Accelerator was helping enterprises prepare for the arrival of quantum advantage with a strong focus on driving awareness, business fluency and building technical skills. In 2023, our model shifted in response to advancements in technology and sophisticated buying dynamics. It was focused on learning by doing with joint development on early small POCs. Today, we are announcing IBM Quantum Accelerator 3.0. It's another evolution of our engagement model with expanded focus on large scale utility demonstrations and integration into enterprise workflows.
This is to prepare organizations for integration of quantum compute into their heterogeneous workflows. Here's a high level overview of our Accelerator engagement framework - it includes use case ideation and prioritization that is based both on business value, technical feasibility and time scales. We also look at enterprise application, workflow design, prototype development to validate business value, demonstrate integration, and showcase business utility. Of course, it's supported by digital content for broad learning across the enterprise.
But as with our collaborative partnerships with industry clients that continue to push us further to drive innovation and advance our collective pursuit of business utility. Right now, I would like to welcome Dr. Kim from Hyundai to join me on stage. Hyundai has been Hyundai has been working with us for for just under a year. And Dr. Kim is going to share some of the work that we've been doing collectively.
So there you go. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Good day.
I am Sangtae Kim, a senior engineer at Hyundai Motor Company. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks to IBM for hosting this event. As you know, We are a car company, but we are curious about when and how quantum computing can be useful from the perspective of the user.
We think quantum computing can do amazing things in optimizations, and for machine learning. So, we teamed up with IBM to figure out the best time for this to happen. The optimization piece is quite big, in that vehicle routing is a crucial part for our future business plans. Figuring out the best routes is very important for things like electric vehicle navigation, service fleets, supply chains, and more. That's why, by quantum computing, Vehicle Routing Optimization is important for us.
Routing optimization is very important for us. Making the best layouts is tricky. There are many, many things to think about, how far it is, how long it takes, how many trucks we need. As the problem size increases, classical solvers, such as CPLEX, may struggle to find the solutions. This, This is where we see quantum computing potentially providing solutions in a big picture, we work with the IBM Quantum team to convert the original problem That is, vehicle optimization problems, into a set-partition problem so that we can handle the quantum computing problems. And this comparison is fair.
This approach allows us to scale the problems, scale the problems to test hardware maturity. In other words, we make this approach possible to compare quantum computing and classical computing depending on the size of the problem. This is your conclusion.
We found a Pareto Front using this approach. Scaled from ten qubits up to 75 qubits using noisy hardware with error mitigation techniques. This is a major business objective for optimizations.
This means. Finding the optimal solutions Out of two to the power of 75 choices. This result is encouraging to us because two to the power of 75 is a huge number. But we found the solution in the number. We continue to experiment to scale up qubits, To test 100 Qubits and more.
Through this I hope we will find our quantum computing Business utility timeframes. My presentation is over. Thank you. Thank you for your attention. Yeah. I would like to thank Dr.
Kim and the combined IBM and Hyundai team for the work that they're driving. Super exciting, very promising. Hyundai is not alone in their pursuit for business utility. That's why we're all here right? Now We would like to welcome to the stage Marna Kagele from Boeing Company and Phil Intallura from HSBC. Both Marna and Phil are representing organizations who have been partnering with IBM for many years and driving innovation in the marketplace.
Let's get started with a little bit of context. You both have important roles in your organizations, evaluating, positioning your organizations to take full advantage of the technology as it matures. So let's start off with a little first question, a little context for our audience here, Marna.
Can you tell me a little bit about the role that you play within Boeing? And what what about that role is professionally or personally exciting to you? Yes. Hi, I'm Marna Kagele. I'm a technical fellow at Boeing and I lead our quantum computing team. My passion and interest in quantum computing actually stems from a previous role.
So in a previous job, I was researching emerging technologies, and this was a little while ago, but one of those technologies was quantum computing. So we were keeping an eye on it and we saw this vision for a potential future. But at that time, that future was a little hazy.
So you might imagine it's like looking at an image, it's a little blurry. You can't quite see what it is, but maybe you can pick out enough definition to see it's an outline and maybe you see an outline and you see it's an animal. So over these last few years, there have been so many advances in quantum computing.
You might imagine our image comes into focus a little bit more. So maybe now we can see that that image is not just an animal, but it's a dog. And so we anticipate a future where we have so much clarity and definition, we can see that it's not just a dog, but it's a specific dog. It's a golden retriever named Richard. And so that's what gets me really excited about quantum computing, because when we have that kind of definition, we will really be harnessing the full impact of quantum computing. That's great. Phil, how about you?
Well, Heather, I've been close to this technology for over 20 years, and I remember distinctly when I told my friends and family that I was going to do a research degree in Quantum communications back in 2005. They did question, What am I doing with my life? Of course, back then, quantum computing didn't exist. It was a theoretical construct. And I also recall pleading to present our papers and our results at conferences and maybe getting the last lot of the day.
And here we are, nearly 20 years later, with incredible technological breakthroughs and multi-day conferences here dedicated to Quantum in this fantastic location. So it's an absolute delight to be here today to talk about how we're approaching quantum computing technologies at HSBC. It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity for many of us right at the forefront of this technology revolution.
But it's not without its challenges. As with any disruptive technology, the decision of when and how to invest ahead of business results can be a challenge. Marna, how do you approach that at Boeing? Can you give us a little bit of insight into the vision and the motivation that got you started at Boeing in the early days? And has that vision changed now? Well, I'd say that the vision in the beginning was just to understand, is this tool, quantum computing, is it going to be useful for us? And if so, what are the applications where it would be useful? So that's where we started out.
And we've been systematic in our approach. We are an engineering company and specifically an engineering company with products whose lifetimes are measured in decades. So we're pretty comfortable with taking a long term view, a long term approach.
And so we did determine, yes, quantum computing makes sense for us. We got a good feeling for that. But what we're seeing that we still need to work on are some of the barriers that still remain to implementation.
So that's what we're ready to knock down and that's where our focus is. So that initial vision remains the same. The direction we're going. But maybe some of our near-term projects are a little different.
And maybe some of these announcements that we've talked about today can help knock down some of those barriers. It brings us that much closer to our to business value. Thank you, Marna. Phil, HSBC was one of our very first Accelerator clients. I just talked a little bit about Accelerator.
Can you talk about your focus at HSBC and why it matters today for your organization? Sure. So, you know, quantum technology matters to HSBC for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you've got the commercial upside of this technology. It's significant. Right. And I think McKinsey put the value estimate to be unlocked from Quantum at around 1.3 trillion by 2035. And 55% of that value is attributed to financial services.
And the reason for that, of course, is because the types of problems that quantum computing can speed up are very close To the types of models that we solve in the bank every day: fraud detection, portfolio optimization, derivative pricing, financial simulation and so forth. So you've got that sort of, you know, very significant commercial side of things. But the second reason is because you also have this emerging threat that quantum computing poses to cyber security.
And, you know, this isn't unique to HSBC, of course, it will impact every faction of every industry. But banks are a significant target for cybercrime. And given the billions of payments worth trillions of dollars we make and process every year for our customers, it's particularly important for financial services, you know, critical services we provide to customers every single day. And so we're thinking early about how we transform our cyber security landscape to become quantum resistant. So in a nutshell, on one hand, you've got, you know, quantum computing from its value that can be unlocked. And we've also got this readiness in terms of the emerging threat of the risk to cryptography.
I'm hoping that the perspectives from both Boeing and HSBC will resonate with many of you in terms of what we as a community need to work toward together to achieve the results that we want to see. Let's switch it up a little bit. Let's talk about use cases and how do we unlock business value. So at IBM, you've heard us say it. We talk about three broad application areas: simulating nature, advanced mathematics and complex data structures, along with search and optimization. We further break those categories down into different types of problem classifications, of problem types.
So you could think of classification, combinatorial optimization, we break them down so that we can start to think about, with an enterprise, How do you start to prioritize based on technical feasibility, based on time to value? Really, really important to make sure that you're balancing those investments. But it's a daunting task, right? Hundreds and hundreds of use case opportunities. We've got some that are, you know, represented there. Purposeful investment is really important and selecting those focus areas is a monumental task. So, Marna, let's start with you. Can you talk a little bit about the use cases that are important to Boeing? What are the areas that you're focused on? Yeah, well, I'll just start with - it's no wonder that our partnership has gone so well because our use cases fit into your top three categories really well.
I'll highlight some of those. So starting with simulating nature: So for us, a big use case there is related to chemistry and specifically corrosion. Corrosion is a multibillion dollar drain on the aerospace industry and other industries.
And so it's a big focus for us. There's a lot of room to capture value there. And then if we move to advanced math, the second category, our use cases are typically based on partial differential equations. So things like computational fluid dynamics and electromagnetic effects, specifically computational fluid dynamics is one that has a huge impact on our design processes. So any value we capture there, any ability to enhance our designs, would be welcome.
And finally, in optimization, like many industries, there are many things that can be optimized. And so we look at that as a goal for routing things like logistics. And even again, some of our design processes, one of our use cases that we did some work on with IBM was on ply composite design - so the layup of a piece of composite, and that case study is on the IBM website for anybody who wants to take a closer look at the details there. I think there might even be a video that goes along with that. Yes.
Phil, we just published a paper together. Can you tell us a little bit about that paper and with a little bit of focus around why the use case that you centered on was important? Yeah, sure. So one of the first areas we explored in the Quantum program relates to transactional fraud detection. It's a £1.2 billion problem in the UK alone
and we use machine learning models to help us differentiate between genuine transactions and fraudulent transactions in real time. And so it's a fine balance between detecting genuine fraud and triggering false positives or from a customer perspective, you know, card declines, You know, when you know when it's a genuine transaction and it's kind of that annoying thing that sometimes happens. And so we're always trying to get that better.
And these are marginal. You know, this is a territory of marginal gains. So the work we did with you was to scale down our real HSBC payment dataset to something that could fit onto around 20 features and test whether quantum machine learning methods can outperform our classical production model.
Now it turns out that we can improve the area under the curve by about 0.6% on real data, and the AUC effectively represents how good you are at detecting fraud with one being perfect. And we achieved around a 94.7%. So that 0.6% improvement is significant. It represents a 0.6% improvement in the value correctly categorized, which is much bigger, a much bigger baseline than the losses alone.
And so we just released this paper today on arxiv, which follows about a year's worth of work in our partnership. And so we're super excited about that. We're very excited as well. In fact, I think today is very exciting because we can begin to really see how entering the era of utility is beginning to show really promising results. It's beginning to show capabilities and an ecosystem that is standing behind, you know, in the marketplace, ready to start bringing value forward, Phil, we've had some conversations around business value, and I know within HSBC you have a very broad view of business value. I wonder if you could just tell a little bit about, you know, what does that look like for the audience? Yes.
So I think when people talk about unlocking business value in the context of quantum, they usually refer to "when will we see broad quantum advantage?" You know, that is the ability to do something better with a quantum computer versus the best classical alternative, and that has commercial value, right? And it's going to take some years to see that. Although, you know, we're in this era of quantum utility and those timescales are now moving in. Moving in, moving in. However, when I think of business value, I take a slightly different perspective, which is how can we unlock value in the near-term on our journey to quantum advantage? And so let me share with you some ways we're unlocking value from our quantum program right now. Okay.
The first is value through reputation. The publishing of papers, the filing of patents. These are really strong indicators of innovation for any company, which drives brand value. And, you know, as I said, we've got this paper that we've literally published today which adds to that sort of portfolio of research that we're contributing to. The second kind of area that we can unlock value is through economic advantage. And so pushing the boundaries of classical capabilities through quantum inspired or hybrid models to outperform models we have in the bank today.
Now, these won't give us a quantum advantage, but they do have the benefit of deployment at scale. And so we look at outperforming models we have in the bank today, which aren't necessarily the best classical optimal with the benefit then of future proofing for commercial scale universal gate machines when they when they come along. You know, I love pushing the boundaries.
Right. And then the third area is kind of the value through PR, you know, the media is watching us very closely. They're particularly interested in practitioners of quantum technologies.
And we're seeing demand from institutional clients who want to hear more about what we're doing. And so we run events with our RMs to help build those relationships. And very interestingly, we're also starting to see HSBC win business from quantum companies for their global banking needs because they can see we're such strong advocates of quantum and such strong practitioners. And so I hope that I can convince some people here that as we prepare for this era of quantum utility, which continues to squeeze the timelines to quantum advantage, it is also possible to commercialize quantum in slightly different ways. If you think more broadly than quantum advantage alone. Really exciting and really exciting to see a lot of the confidence, you know, picking up across the ecosystem.
Marna Do you have thoughts or examples of how Boeing thinks about value capture? Yeah, I mean, I guess I have to start by saying we know there's value there, so we feel confident about that. We've seen the use cases and the proof of concept work that we've done. So going back to corrosion, if we can even make a fractional difference in the way that we mitigate corrosion, there's a huge meaningful impact that we could gain from that. So, so we trust in that. We know it's there.
The part we're really focused on, though, is all the things that might keep that value behind a locked door. So things like implementation. And so we're focused on studying that door. What kind of locks are on that door? How many locks are there? What kind of keys do we need to get behind this door? Can we go under the door? Maybe we can go like around the door? So we're really trying to focus on having ourselves ready to capture the value when it is ready. Love that analogy.
Can you talk a little bit about what you've learned along the way in this journey toward where you are today? Share a little bit of insight there? Yeah, we've learned that this is hard. We've learned that it's complex and it's got details that are very complicated and it's constantly changing. So all of that to say we have been able to make progress. And so that gives us a lot of confidence and we've maybe even been able to make more progress than we might have thought in the beginning when we started down this road. So where to next? We are working on opening that door to value, so trying to understand things like alignment to our internal computing roadmaps, trying to figure out integration with our systems and our tools and our processes. And again, just trying to get towards that implementation at scale.
Great. Thanks, Marna. Phil, you've been running the quantum program in the bank for over a year now. What are your biggest learnings to share with this audience? Yeah, it's a great question.
There's probably three things that, you know, really come to mind. The first is that there is a difference of opinion across the group on Quantum. You know, We have that too. Yeah. okay. Good, good.
So, you know, there are some colleagues who think quantum is more science fiction than science fact, and it won't materially impact the business model. And that's fine. You know, my job isn't to persuade them that they're wrong.
My job is to say kind of a risk based approach. And, you know, my view is at the risk of doing nothing is just too high compared to the relatively small cost in the scheme of our I.T. budgets to explore this technology. Now, Yes, it is possible it might not materialize in the ways we expect, but it could also be the best investment we have ever made. And so you've kind of got to play the game and be in the game, a part of this journey.
So yeah, so that difference of opinion, you will meet colleagues along the way. The second area is colleagues are fascinated by this kind of magic of quantum as they see it. And actually it is kind of magic right up at the something cool.
And so colleagues across the organization want to learn more about it. What is it? Why is HSBC looking at this? How are we doing it? And over the last year alone, we've hosted webinars and training sessions to over 10,000 colleagues across the group, which is, you know, which is phenomenal. And it's a real pleasure as well. It's so amazing to see such enthusiasm across the group. And then I think the third area, the third learning really is that whether you're talking to the most senior folk in the bank at the board level or the most junior folk in the organization, most interest peaks around real world use, right? So as much as we do on papers and patents and trainings, what people really care about is how can this technology impact the area of the business that I work in? And so we take special attention to ensure we amplify the work we do across use cases and ensure that we don't do our POCs in isolation, but build really strong relationships with our business partners in taking, you know, some of their real world problems and working with them together to create, you know, these kind of experiments to see whether quantum technology is going to make a difference in the near-term or long term.
And getting towards those large scale operations and integration within the enterprise, which opens up a whole new set of questions. Any last words, either Marna or Phil, that you want to share while we have the audience here? Lessons learned, inspiration? I think I'll just say that it's been really inspiring to witness all of the announcements that were made today and all of the work that everyone's doing. So thank you to everybody who's been sharing and I hope that we all leave today feeling inspired to keep pushing down this path. Yeah, if you haven't started with quantum yet, I would say today's trials are tomorrow's triumph. So get started and see, you know, see what this technology might be able to do for your business. Perfect.
I want to thank you both for taking your time, sharing your insights, your expertise, your perspectives. I am very much, we are very much looking forward to the year ahead where we continue to push past those known boundaries. I also want to thank all of our session experts for joining us today. We hope that the evolution of our offerings, the progress toward business utility and perspectives from industry pioneers will continue to be a beacon of light, paving the way forward and instilling confidence among all of us and in the marketplace.
Thank you.
2023-12-10 15:23
