Australian start-up Q-CTRL has launched “Quantum Professional Services” to assist the organizations that are looking to exploit the power of cloud-based quantum computers.

After observing the increasing shift of finance and telecommunication organizations to cloud-based quantum computing platforms such as IBM Q, Microsoft’s Azure Quantum, Amazon’s Web Services’ Braket, Q-CTRL realized an issue in the transition. And they said they faced some challenges, which probably lead to the launch of this service.

“Developing new algorithms for quantum computers isn’t the only challenge, ” Q-CTRL Quantum Professional Services Lead Andre Carvalho said. “Users still face many obstacles making them run successfully on cloud hardware,” he added.

Before the launch, he observed cloud quantum computing hardware is far from ideal. He also added that to make these systems more usable, the hardware’s performance is not up to the mark or in the desired capacity.

In response to it, the plan for Quantum Professional Services is to assist the organizations in overcoming the constraints of cloud-based quantum computers and improve the algorithm’s success. The results are possible with custom-designed tools, and it helps in hardware calibration and characterization, hardware stabilization against performance variation, algorithm optimization, and performance benchmarking.

“Peak performance has generally only been accessible to specialist hardware research teams and even then still suffers from errors that have prevented the realization of “quantum advantage” — when quantum computers solve practically relevant problems better or faster than conventional machines, ” Carvalho added.

Enterprises are using Quantum as a Service (QAAS) cloud-based interfaces to build a quantum-ready workforce and explore how quantum computing can benefit them,” Carvalho said. “However, pushing quantum computers to deliver true quantum advantage is extremely difficult and has so far not been achievable using standard interfaces.

“That’s why Q-CTRL is now providing a team of experts with unmatched experience characterizing and optimizing cloud-based quantum computing hardware to help our partners achieve maximum performance,” he said.

Add to it, several companies came further for the development of the venture, which includes two Australian companies focused on quantum-enhanced precision navigation and timings. Another Australian University spinout, CyAmast, from the University of New South Wales has raised a sum of AUS 1.3 million to fund the venture, and subsequently aiming to protect the Internet of Things (IoT) from cybercrime.