HCL Technologies teams up with Microsoft to bring quantum computing By CIOTechOutlook Team

HCL Technologies teams up with Microsoft to bring quantum computing

CIOTechOutlook Team | Tuesday, 07 March 2023, 03:01 IST

Azure Quantum, a quantum cloud computing service from Microsoft, and HCL Technologies have established a cooperation. By utilising Microsoft's platform as the technology stack, HCLTech will provide its clients with cloud-based quantum computing services. The services will be offered by HCLTech's Q-Labs, one of Microsoft's partners who has previously offered Azure Quantum credits.

In this collaboration, HCLTech's Q-Labs will develop proof of concept (PoC) business use cases and on-cloud demonstrations of quantum technologies for the company's clients. In an early stage of their partnership, Microsoft and HCLTech Q-Lab have seen "impressive engagement" from "introducing enterprises to quantum computing foundations and applications explorable right not through PoC pilots," according to Linda Lauw, senior director at Microsoft's Azure Quantum Planning and Partnerships.

According to a statement from the business, HCLTech's Q-Labs also fosters early-stage research initiatives aiming to create commercial quantum computing applications. In order to create these use cases, Q-Lab will make the quantum computing cloud service available to "near to 1,000 people throughout the world" as part of its relationship with Microsoft.

The three most well-known cloud-based services that give companies access to quantum hardware through the cloud are Microsoft's Azure Quantum, Google's Cirq, and IBM's Quantum. Each of these businesses is slowly but surely moving closer to commercialising quantum computing services.

In order to aid in the development of algorithms, applications, and skill sets among engineers, IBM Quantum announced a partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras in September of last year. Through this partnership, IIT Madras students will have access to IBM Quantum's quantum hardware.

On February 22, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that a group of researchers at the business had been successful in creating "logical qubits," which are larger versions of the basic quantum computing building parts, and utilising them to lower the computational mistakes produced by quantum computers. The latter's essential computer component, qubits, need a particular set of circumstances in order to function at their quantum state. The researchers asserted that by combining 47 qubits into a single, bigger entity, they improved the accuracy of quantum calculations and so moved closer to commercialising quantum computers.