The Age Of Quantum Data

What if your retail store could simultaneously reach every potential buyer on the planet through totally personalized marketing offers based on location, buyer behavior, buyer history, social media, global economic conditions, and world events? The possibilities are endless with “quantum data” and computing.

Is quantum data the next big thing? A recent article in Time magazine talked about quantum computing and the “marriage of two of the great scientific undertakings of the 20^th century, quantum physics and digital computing.” In the bizarre world of quantum computers, we can today perform exponentially greater operations simultaneously based on quantum physics. The potential for solving optimization problems across industries is enormous and exciting. But what could this all mean for storing and analyzing big data?

While quantum databases are still in the future, quantum-based algorithms for optimizing and analyzing vast amounts of data are here today and being used by Lockheed Martin and others for testing and optimizing software that is currently too complex for conventional computers. So while the analysis of the data can be done faster than lightning, we are bounded by where the data resides and how long it might take to connect to and process that data.

One possibility is the notion of a parallel query language (PQL as opposed to SQL) that would initiate an exponentially greater number of SQL statements to a broad spectrum of data sources - simultaneously. The connectivity in this scenario could be the bottleneck, so it would be incredibly important to ensure that you have vastly superior performance within the connectors that can keep up with the rapid analysis and data integration.

As you can see, the importance of high performance in data connectivity will always be present. This is the age of Big Data after all, and we are burying ourselves in information resulting from medical research, retail transactions, social media, scientific research, and search queries. Data connectivity will continue as an integral component in data integration solutions, giving a new and more significant meaning to “high performance”.

Progress DataDirect, with its proven technologies for powerful and scalable data connectivity, will continue to deliver high-performance in the context of the Progress Pacific platform of services. The quantum data canvas has yet to be painted, but DataDirect innovations could go a long way in seeing further and in adapting quickly and effectively to new data sources.

Check out some of our other blog posts, which go into more specific use cases involving our highly efficient data connectivity at http://blogs.datadirect.com. You can also connect with us @DataDirect_News.

Side bar: For those unfamiliar with quantum computing, here’s the best explanation I could find (and even this one is pretty complicated): http://cryptome.org/qc-grover.htm. Today, computing is based on a binary system of 1s and 0s. With quantum physics, we not only have 1s and 0s but in addition we have a new state that could be either a 1 or a 0. Think of it as an “anti-state.” In expert systems used in artificial intelligence, think of this as “yes”, “no”, and “yes and no”. It is this new variance which would allow expert systems to optimize decisions by taking a parallel branch that pursues additional possible answers. The bottom-line is that many operations can be carried out at the same time, with a truly parallel quantum-based computer.