Latest news with #BryanHarris
Forbes
14-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Cooking Up Quantum Computing: Is It Dinnertime Yet?
BANGKOK, THAILAND - 2004/10/01: A chef demonstrates how to cook Spring Rolls at the Peninsula ... More Hotel's cooking school in Bangkok. Opening one of their restaurant kitchens as a real to life kitchen, the Peninsula has joined ranks in Thailand's latest tourism trend: Thai cooking schools, where visitors to the kingdom can learn the secrets of one of the world's most favorite cuisines and then take them home. (Photo by Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty Images) Quantum computing is something of an enigma. For many analysts, advocates and evangelists across the technology industry, the quantum mixture has been quite maturely and meticulously defined; all we're waiting for now is a hardware-first evolution of systems design and manufacturing to make these super-powerful services more readily available. At the same time, many hands-on practitioners see it as further afield and might list it as a still-embryonic technology, due to fact that its mass market ubiquity is clearly lower in terms of penetration. Let's stop short of explaining quantum computing from scratch again, but perhaps remember that in standard binary computing, there are heads and tails, on and off, ones and zeros… but in quantum, the coin is spinning in the air and the value is potentially both heads and tails at the same time, a measure which is further extended depending on what angle we view the money piece from. In search of a comparatively original analogy to explain where quantum computing is at SAS CTO Bryan Harris has likened quantum computing to cooking on a five-burner stove with just four pots, while trying to fix 10 different meals using a multiplicity of different ingredients, some organic, some store-bought, standard issue. The cook's challenge (if this scenario were real) would be working out what order to cook the dishes in, when and where pots and pans could be reused, which ones needed to be cleaned to avoid cross-contamination… and then perhaps which ones could be left unwashed to build an enriched flavor profile in the final meal. With so many enterprise technology vendors (mostly large-scale, but start-ups too) now laying down a menu for the quantum arena today, it's not outrageous to say that few Michelin stars are being handed out in this market right now. We don't quite know all the recipes yet; we might even see too many cooks spoiling the broth unless we start to agree on some standardization. In terms of which firms are most active in quantum computing from the software application perspective development end of the spectrum, the key list includes IBM with the IBM Quantum platform offering a cloud-based access route to its superconducting qubit systems. Alongside the aforementioned SAS, there is Cisco and of course Google's Quantum AI division, which also centralizes its research and development on superconducting qubit technology. Through Azure Quantum, Microsoft makes sure it has skin in the game, then there is AWS, with the cloud hyperscaler giant providing quantum computing services through Amazon Braket, a technology base intended to enable software engineering teams to play and experiment with different quantum hardware platforms including technology from D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti. The list of quantum luminaries (or luminaries in waiting) also includes Quantinuum, PsiQuantum, the above-noted D-Wave. With a reputation for advancing quantum annealing technology, D-Wave has progressed this method of optimization in the quantum field, which involves processes such as 'tunneling' to find the lowest energy state for any quantum computation. Finally, let's mention Xanadu, an organization that has become known for its open source approach to photonic quantum computing methods (something NTT also works closely and extensively with), which makes use of light particles (photons) rather than electrical electrons for computation. Aiming to become what it calls the 'Microsoft of quantum' (which in our epicurean analogy might be the McDonald's of quantum) is Israeli start-up Classiq Technologies. Now with funding and four years of development under its belt, founding CEO Nir Minerbi, CTO Yehuda Naveh and his son CPO Amir Naveh, think they have a recipe for success. Classiq Technologies has designed and created a software operating platform (as opposed to an operating system) intended to be used with what the firm says is 'all major types' of quantum hardware. The technology is custom-aligned to enable software engineers who primarily define themselves as data science specialists and computational scientists to develop quantum algorithms and create software applications and data services that with high-performance computational power. The company's Minerbi is quoted on the Times Of Israel saying, 'We are building the Microsoft of quantum computing. [This is] a software layer that powers the next generation of quantum applications, just as Microsoft did for classical computing. Microsoft's Windows made computers easier to use and allowed millions of people to build software without worrying about the machine underneath. Quantum computing is at a similar point today as personal computing was back then: It's powerful but hard to use… and we are delivering the essential software stack to empower the development of real-world quantum applications.' Back at SAS - a company that has laid down an arguably established estate of hybrid quantum offerings for some years now - the company somewhat hopefully suggests that as many as three out of five businesses are exploring quantum AI. The company's latest market study of quantum and related technologies makes direct inroads towards the possibility of quantum AI. SAS defines quantum AI by reminding us that 'The early 2000s saw the establishment of the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab by NASA, Google and the Universities Space Research Association. This initiative aimed to pioneer research on how quantum computing could enhance machine learning and other complex computational tasks. Around the same time, researchers began developing quantum machine learning algorithms, which leverage quantum computing to improve the speed and accuracy of AI models. In recent years, the focus has shifted toward the practical application of quantum AI.' SAS is sure that it has a handle on why firms struggle with quantum adoption and says that its research finds top concerns that include high cost, a lack of quantum skill sets and uncertainty around practical, real-world uses. The company thinks that while interest in quantum AI is on the rise, organizations need a clear roadmap and guide to make better use of this technology. Through pilot projects with customers, quantum AI research and work with leaders in quantum computing, SAS says it can provide guidance to businesses on applying quantum technologies as it seeks to make quantum understandable and approachable to a broad audience. It wants to help organizations get value out of emerging quantum services faster without having to understand the complex quantum market or the physics behind the technology. 'For decades, SAS has helped organizations across a host of industries find better answers faster and improve business decisions through data and AI. With the emergence of quantum technologies, companies can analyze more data than ever and achieve amazingly fast answers to very complex questions involving myriad variables,' said Bill Wisotsky, principal quantum architect at SAS. Wisotsky and team also detail the fact that a major consumer goods company is working with SAS on a proof of concept related to hybrid quantum-classical optimization, using quantum annealing and SAS classical optimization solvers. The company is now working with D-Wave Quantum Inc, IBM and QuEra Computing Inc. The latter is a specialist in neutral-atom quantum computing and SAS is a member of the QuEra Quantum Alliance Partner Program. 'SAS is already tackling real-world problems by applying hybrid architectures, which include both quantum and traditional (aka. classical) computing. Quantum AI brings together quantum computing and AI to develop new algorithms, models and systems that can process complex data, train complicated machine learning models and solve problems considered challenging or impossible with traditional computers,' detailed the company, in a press statement. Cisco has also been working hard to get the quantum dinner table set. The company's Quantum network entanglement chip is a research prototype that enables quantum networks to scale and connect quantum processors for practical applications. According to Vijoy Pandey, senior VP for Outshift by Cisco, just as Cisco helped build infrastructure for the internet, the organization is now focused on creating quantum networking technology that will be the foundation for the quantum internet, thereby (he claims) making quantum computing practical, 'years ahead of current timelines' with new milestone developments. The company recently opened Cisco Quantum Labs, a dedicated research lab in Santa Monica, CA, where quantum scientists and engineers are building tomorrow's quantum networking technologies. "Here's the challenge: today's quantum processors have only hundreds of qubits, while applications require millions. Even the most ambitious quantum computing roadmaps currently only target a few thousand qubits by 2030,' explained Pandey. 'Decades ago, classical computing faced similar challenges until we began to connect smaller nodes together through networking infrastructure to create powerful distributed systems within data centers and cloud computing. Just as the use of large classical monolithic computer systems phased out, the future of quantum does not lie in a single monolithic quantum computer. Scaled-out quantum data centers, where processors work together through specialized networking, will be the practical and achievable path forward. Companies building quantum processors will benefit from Cisco's quantum networking technologies to scale their systems. By building this infrastructure now, Cisco is helping to accelerate the entire quantum ecosystem.' Cisco's prototype quantum network entanglement chip generates pairs of entangled photons that enable instantaneous connection regardless of distance through quantum teleportation. That's a technology that Einstein described as 'spooky action at a distance' and is now becoming a reality. The company says its developments in this space work with existing infrastructures and operate at standard telecom wavelengths, so they can use existing fiber optic infrastructure. Crucially, here, this technology works effectively at room temperature as a miniaturized Photonic Integrated Chip (PIC), a significant development given the massive heat generated by quantum and the major cooling systems that are usually needed. 'Beyond the entanglement chip, we're using the lab to advance research prototypes of other critical components to complete our vision of the quantum networking stack, including entanglement distribution protocols, a distributed quantum computing compiler, Quantum Network Development Kit and a Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) using quantum vacuum noise. More components of our quantum datacenter infrastructure roadmap will be announced soon as we complete our vision of the quantum networking stack,' blogged Pandey. So is it quantum dinnertime, is the table laid and are all the pots and pans ready to go into process in the right sequence? We might optimistically say yes, to a degree, but you might want to get your orders in early and wait for a few kitchen mishaps along the way. When the final dishes do arrive, they will be supersized, superfast and hopefully super tasty.
Korea Herald
08-05-2025
- Business
- Korea Herald
From synthetic data to AI agents, new SAS Viya innovations boost speed, productivity and trust
ORLANDO, Fla., May 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- SAS Innovate -- Data and AI leader SAS today announced its latest offerings on the SAS ® Viya ® platform, spanning the latest leaps in AI advancement to scale and galvanize human productivity and decision-making. "SAS is evolving its strategy and portfolio to embrace a broader ecosystem of user personas, preferences, and technologies within an enterprise's AI technology stack," said Kathy Lange, research director for AI Software at IDC. "SAS continues to develop offerings that streamline and automate the AI life cycle and enable organizations to make better business decisions faster." The latest and upcoming SAS Viya debuts include: Unparalleled productivity, trusted results SAS is breaking through the AI and GenAI hype to deliver real capabilities that drive real results with SAS Viya – a comprehensive data and AI platform that empowers people of all skill levels to participate in the analytics process. The SAS Viya platform delivers users a choice to be a builder of AI with end-to-end platform tools, or buyers of AI solutions and model packages – each delivering scale and productivity to enable better decisions and faster time to value. Developers, data scientists, IT professionals and business analysts can collaborate seamlessly within the SAS Viya ecosystem and throughout the data and AI life cycle to make intelligent decisions. SAS Viya accelerates productivity across diverse industries and regulatory landscapes, offering a clear advantage to organizations, particularly CIOs and IT leaders. In fact, a 2024 Futurum Group AI productivity study revealed that SAS Viya helps users accelerate the AI life cycle, enabling them to collect data, build models, and deploy decisions 4.6 times faster than selected competitors – all while helping them increase innovation, expedite decision making and drive revenue growth. "The current economic climate and rapid pace of AI innovation can feel intense and overwhelming," said Bryan Harris, Chief Technology Officer at SAS. "Our goal is to deliver cutting-edge AI capabilities that help organizations navigate the hype and disruption, make breakthroughs in problem solving, and gain a decision advantage." Supporting global conservation with data and AI The power of SAS Viya extends beyond improving business outcomes to boosting global conservation efforts. Fathom Science, a technology start-up building digital twins of the ocean, tapped SAS Viya to tackle an impractical problem that brought together the unlikely combination of ocean data, AI and a species in need of a lifeline. To validate their state-of-the-science whale location prediction model that helps prevent vessels from striking critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, Fathom Science used SAS Data Maker to create synthetic data with the characteristics of the actual shipping lane data to expand to 500,000 data points. With the data in hand, SAS Viya Workbench was used to develop models to calculate the probability of whales' distance from shore. The result? Fathom Science gained statistical and machine learning validation of its whale location prediction model. Today's announcement was made at SAS Innovate, the data and AI experience for business leaders, technical users and SAS Partners. Keep up with the latest news from SAS by visiting or follow us on LinkedIn or X. About SAS SAS is a global leader in data and AI. With SAS software and industry-specific solutions, organizations transform data into trusted decisions. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW ®. SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2025 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Techday NZ
07-05-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
SAS Viya expands AI tools with new offerings & cloud services
SAS has unveiled several new offerings on its SAS Viya platform aimed at supporting greater speed, productivity, and trust in AI deployment and analytics. The latest additions to SAS Viya include the forthcoming SAS Data Maker, a synthetic data generator intended to tackle data privacy and scarcity issues within organisations. According to SAS, this solution builds on technology acquired from Hazy's principal software assets and is expected to be generally available in the third quarter of 2025. Currently available is SAS Viya Intelligent Decisioning, which allows users to construct and deploy intelligent AI agents designed to provide an appropriate balance between machine autonomy and human oversight, taking into account task complexity, risk profiles, and business objectives. SAS has also launched SAS Managed Cloud Services: SAS Viya Essentials, a managed service package primarily aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. The company says that Viya Essentials delivers the SAS Viya experience in a compact, hosted and managed service arrangement to help reduce barriers to entry for organisations seeking to implement analytics capabilities. SAS Viya Copilot, an AI-powered conversational assistant, is currently in private preview with general availability expected in the third quarter of 2025. According to SAS, the Copilot will provide assistance to developers, data scientists, and business users, enabling AI-powered model development and code support. It is built on Azure AI Services and is described as a significant outcome of the SAS and Microsoft partnership. Another recent release is SAS Viya Workbench, which offers a cloud environment for coding aimed at enhancing the speed and efficiency of developers, data scientists, and modelers. Workbench facilitates data management, analysis, and model development using SAS or Python code and integrates with Visual Studio Code or Jupyter Notebook. For 2025, Workbench adds support for R coding, SAS Enterprise Guide as an IDE option, and is expanding its availability from AWS Marketplace to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Kathy Lange, Research Director for AI Software at IDC, commented on the company's direction: "SAS is evolving its strategy and portfolio to embrace a broader ecosystem of user personas, preferences, and technologies within an enterprise's AI technology stack. SAS continues to develop offerings that streamline and automate the AI life cycle and enable organisations to make better business decisions faster." SAS highlighted a recent AI productivity study conducted by the Futurum Group in 2024, which reported that SAS Viya users were able to accelerate their AI life cycle by collecting data, building models, and deploying decisions 4.6 times faster than selected competitors. The study also found increased innovation, faster decision making, and revenue growth for users. Bryan Harris, Chief Technology Officer at SAS, addressed the pace of change in the AI sector by saying, "The current economic climate and rapid pace of AI innovation can feel intense and overwhelming. Our goal is to deliver cutting-edge AI capabilities that help organisations navigate the hype and disruption, make breakthroughs in problem solving, and gain a decision advantage." SAS also pointed to the role its technology is playing beyond commercial applications. Fathom Science, a start-up focused on creating digital twins of the ocean, used SAS Viya to address marine conservation concerns. By employing SAS Data Maker, Fathom Science generated synthetic shipping lane data to aid in the validation of its whale location prediction model, which is designed to reduce the risk of vessels striking critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. The process involved expanding available data points and utilising SAS Viya Workbench to develop machine learning models for estimating whale proximity to shore, leading to statistical and machine learning validation of their approach.
Time of India
07-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
From Cary to Pune: An analytics titan is forging its AI innovation future
representative image (ANI) Bryan Harris said: Expanding responsibilities Everything about analytics software firm SAS is unassuming -like an iceberg that hides its sheer size beneath the waters. It started out as a research project at North Carolina State University in the 1960s to create a statistical analysis system, was incorporated in 1976 and has had the same CEO for the last 49 years, James Goodnight. It has been routinely praised for decades for using higher proportions of its revenue on research and development as compared to its peers. It is also one of the largest privately held software companies in the world. Suffice it to say, SAS Institute , as it is officially called, has seen all the tech waves, bubbles, and slumps imaginable and is still relevant today precisely because of its focus on R& SAS finds itself in the midst of another tech revolution – artificial intelligence – and the company's Pune R&D centre, set up 25 years ago, is playing a central role in helping the company stay ahead of the curve. That's what the firm's CTO Bryan Harris told us during his recent visit to Pune.'Pune is our largest remote R&D centre in the world, and it's an absolutely strategic asset for us,' Harris declared. 'Every part of our portfolio— our Viya platform (SAS' artificial intelligence, analytics, and data management platform) our industry solutions and our stand-alone AI models—has the fingerprints of Indian engineers on it.'The company employs just over 12,000 people worldwide, and more than a thousand of them now sit in India; about 800 are hard-core developers. 'The site has been growing 30 percent a year, and I expect it to keep that pace for the foreseeable future,' Harris said. 'Pune already looks like a miniaturised version of our headquarters in Cary, North Carolina.'The SAS of today is pitching a three-layered AI stack: build on Viya if you have data scientists, buy off-the-shelf solutions if you don't, or plug in individual models to finetune existing workflows. 'Whether a bank wants a full customer-intelligence suite or just a single supply-chain model, we give them the choice,' he said. 'And Pune is building code for every one of those choices.'Take Customer Intelligence 360 , the flagship marketing product that watches a website's clickstream data (a record of all the links and actions a user takes while navigating a website) and decides, in real time, whether to tempt a visitor with a creditcard teaser or a home-loan refinance. 'We're very highly regarded for CI 360, and the Pune team has been instrumental in delivering it as a service and accelerating innovation,' Harris same engineers keep the tills ringing in banking. 'This centre is the hub for our fraud and risk solutions—capital adequacy, regulatory compliance, instant card-swipe fraud detection,' he said. One neural-network model used by global banks tips the scales at 18 terabytes uncompressed yet must rule on a transaction in under 30 milliseconds. 'That model has evolved here for decades,' Harris added with importance is heightened by SAS's unusually balanced revenue mix. 'Half our business is outside the Americas—that's very rare for a US software firm,' Harris observed. 'If we need to serve 95 percent of the world's top banks, we must meet them where they operate, and India is an essential multi-functional hub for that.'The growth spurt is not merely about headcount but about autonomy. Harris spent much of his Pune visit mapping the next wave of responsibilities the site will own. 'I want the engineers here making strategic design decisions, not just writing code to a spec,' he said. 'They already run global network operations and technical support; now we're pushing deeper into platform architecture and model governance.'Generative AI may dominate headlines, but Harris insists that traditional, deterministic models still drive most profits. 'Large language models are marvellous, but they don't issue a mortgage or spot card fraud in 30 milliseconds,' he said. 'The magic lies in orchestrating generative and deterministic models together—and our intelligent decisioning application, again built with heavy lifting from Pune, does exactly that.'
