Interview | Carl Dubatz, Global Quantum Program Lead at Accenture

Carl Dukatz, Global Quantum Program Lead at Accenture shares his thoughts on how the pandemic has helped drive a digital transformation across many verticals and the impact of this on Quantum Technologies. Carl Dukatz also discusses the major challenges Accenture have faced in the Quantum landscape and in which industries Carl is seeing the most applications of Quantum currently.

Can you explain what your company does within the quantum landscape?

Accenture partners with clients to deliver on the promise of quantum computing, preparing organizations today for the quantum future through workshops, projects, and programs.

What has been your biggest challenge in the industry? 

Growing the quantum workforce continues to be a major challenge for the industry. Accenture is working to enable professionals to add quantum skills on top of their existing expertise.

We have seen the pandemic drive a digital transformation across many verticals; how is this impacting on quantum technologies?

The pandemic has made technology innovation more important than ever. Opportunities that businesses expected to have years to prepare for arrived overnight, and previously slow-growing pain-points were pushed to the surface. Today, companies are in a massive innovation sprint and we’re seeing increased interest in quantum as a result, given its vast business potential.

Can you give any good real world examples of the implementation of your technologies?

Accenture has created a quantum molecular comparison tool for drug discovery with Biogen and 1QBit, solved problems in portfolio optimization, credit scoring, and currency arbitrage with BBVA, helped automakers with their quantum strategies, and recently helped attract new and retain existing customers at a telecommunications company.

Do you think quantum computing will augment or replace classical computing?

For the foreseeable future it will augment classical computing through hybrid approaches. We expect the Quantum computing hardware evolution will be similar to classical hardware; with each iteration (larger qubit counts, greater gate depth, increased connectivity, miniaturization of components, error correction), the researched enterprise use cases will trend toward delivering business advantage and move from running on classical hardware to running on quantum hardware. This quantum hardware will still require the support of ancillary classical hardware to be useful for business.

Do you see a continuing trend towards M&A between quantum solution providers?

The quantum ecosystem has recently survived the threat of a quantum winter, and now there is more investment than ever. With the increasing number of entrants into quantum, it is natural for the ecosystem to be active with partnerships, M&A, and exits at this time.

How are you currently sourcing talent?

We continue to grow by aligning more internal quantum talent to our dedicated teams as well as hiring from external sources.

How far off do you think we are from ‘quantum supremacy’?

I think that ‘quantum supremacy’ has been proven, however we have yet to see ‘quantum advantage’ for business. ‘Advantage’ could happen anytime, even with NISQ systems.

What industries are you seeing the most applications of quantum currently?

There are hundreds of uses for quantum computers across industries – wherever we can solve optimization, machine learning, and simulation problems. For the past 5 years the most active industries have been financial services and pharmaceuticals, however interest is leveling out and there are many players from resources, automotive, and telecommunications. 

Hear from Carl, as he discusses why now is the time to experiment with quantum business applications. He joins us at Quantum Tech virtual, 30 September on the 2:55pm EST session about 'Business experiments with Quantum Computers.'