Quantum is one of our biggest bets: Dinesh Nirmal, Senior VP at IBM

What type of technology demand do you see from your customers?

IBM’s strategy and focus has always been on how we can help and meet customers wherever they go. Right now, every customer is focused on three things: one: the hybrid cloud; two, agent AI; and three, quantum. These are the three core areas that clients focus on.

IBM recently announced the quantum project with the Maharashtra government. How important is quantum technology for the company?

We have invested an astonishing amount in quantum. In an ongoing collaboration with HSBC, researchers combined quantum and classical computational methods to analyze real-world bond trading data.

The hybrid approach delivered up to 34 percent improvement over classical techniques for predicting transaction completion – a clear demonstration of the potential of current quantum systems, such as our IBM Quantum Heron processors, to deliver real business value today.

So that’s the first kind of remote use where that comes to life or where customers see productivity for real use cases in the world. The Maharashtra government was another government that allowed us to really bring quantum to life in India. It’s a huge investment for us.

Why do you call it one of your biggest bets?

As the world generates more data and more people use computers, the need for computing will also increase. That is only possible through quantum. We also just announced Quantum Safe, to implement encryption before customers start using it. We are already seeing use cases and the need for quantum-related software such as Quantum Safe, and it is already gaining good traction in the market from the security and financial sectors.

The Indian IT talent pool is likely to return to India. Has that changed IBM’s plans towards India?

India is a huge market for us, not just from a talent perspective, but also from a customer base perspective. So having a hub here is always critical for IBM. We always had a research lab, a hardware lab and a software lab. Given the customer base, ongoing digitalization, growth and talent pool on the horizon, every company would want to have a base in India. IBM too.

Do you think you will see headcount increases or impact in the coming quarters due to the productivity that companies owe to AI-based tools like Bob?

If I say that as a developer you can now write another 30,000 lines of code, someone has to debug and then review the code to make sure it’s good. I’m also talking about the inner loop and the outer loop, which is about secure encryption.

The next stage is what I call ‘literate coding’; as you speak to it, it generates code for you. Natural language can cause code generation. So I think there’s a lot of development happening from a productivity perspective, which will require even more developers.

We’re going from a phase where someone wrote code, to someone speaking in natural language, to creating code. So technology is changing, requiring more talent that needs more expertise and more skills, but productivity will continue to improve and increase. We will also need more highly talented people in that phase.