UK Businesses Interest in Quantum Computing Accelerating

24 Feb 2022 04:55 PM

Hyperion report reveals 69% of companies surveyed already have an in-house quantum computing program

Hyperion Research, the high-performance computing analyst group, released a report sponsored by D-Wave Systems Inc. that explored commercial attitude and appetite for quantum computing.

The survey garnered over 400 responses, 17% of which were from the United Kingdom, the second highest percentage. Other respondents came from across the globe with companies headquartered in the United States (32%), France (9%), Germany (8%), Italy (8%), South Korea (8%), Japan (8%), Spain (7%), and Switzerland (3%). Over half of those surveyed reported that they serve as a CTO, CIO, or IT Director, and 60% describe themselves as procurement process decision-makers with the power to select enterprise technology for their business.

The report showed that nearly 70% of those surveyed have some form of an in-house quantum computing program. Respondents stated that the desire to use quantum computing technologies came from a few areas including:

Respondents also stated that their current computing capabilities were insufficient for their needs. Survey respondents indicated that their compute centers do not have adequate capability to meet all of their existing demands, and some stated they could benefit from a doubling of available compute capability.

Time-to-solution was cited as an obstacle that interferes with a business’s ability to successfully tackle computationally-intensive business problems. Of those surveyed, 43% believe that it currently takes too much time to implement a solution using classical resources, and 36% are concerned with the amount of time it takes to compute once a solution has been implemented. Additional obstacles include the complexity of problems given the incredible number of variables and constraints for many business problems (28%) and the high cost of existing resources (15%).

The businesses covered a variety of verticals from life sciences to manufacturing, aerospace to telecommunication, retail to energy. Hyperion’s research analysis shows that optimization problems are the leading category of tasks solvable with quantum computing resources. Those surveyed consider the strongest candidates for improved operational capabilities to be solving financial optimization problems (52%), manufacturing and factory process problems (49%), logistics/supply chain problems (47%), and staffing/scheduling problems (36%).

Of all countries represented in the survey, US and UK respondents considered the high commitment of current budget/IT resources to be the chief hurdle (69% and 66%, respectively) for using quantum computing.

As the UK government looks at quantum computing near-term use cases, so too are UK businesses. Quantum computing can help tackle many business-scale problems today, especially optimization problems. Cloud access to quantum computing systems has also broken down the barriers to access with lower costs and easy online access through a variety of platforms. Find out more about other trends in quantum computing by downloading a copy of the report “Broad Interest in Quantum Computing as a Driver of Commercial Success.”