AI will revolutionise not only the UC and collaboration industry and the IT and telecommunications sector at large but everyday society. It will transform how we work and even what types of jobs we work. It will build new ways of communicating with family, friends and colleagues and could make previous forms of communication redundant. From now on, it will probably influence our political, cultural and economic spheres ad infinitum.
AI will be fascinating, thrilling, and, if misused, terrifying. That's pretty much agreed upon as the new normal — a reality that most people accept regardless of how they feel about its purpose and applications.
But another imminent tech revolution is happening that could have as seismic an impact, both in our everyday lives and in the world of UC and collaboration. What about quantum computing?
What is Quantum Computing?
Quantum computing is a groundbreaking form of computation that leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to process information.
While traditional computers use binary bits to signify data as 0s and 1s, quantum computers use quantum bits — or qubits. These can exist in a "superposition" of states, meaning they can represent multiple combinations of 0s and 1s at the same time, in parallel rather than as a sequence. When qubits become "entangled", they become correlated so that the state of one qubit depends on the state of another, regardless of the distance between them through superposition.
What this means in practice is that quantum computers can perform calculations dramatically faster than classical computers, making them suitable for solving complex problems that humans and their classical computers might either take an exhaustively long time to process or struggle to solve altogether.
That revolutionary capability opens up a world of possibilities.
For example, quantum computing could have a momentous impact on optimisation, as it can quickly solve problems with vast numbers of variables. This could have positive implications in areas such as supply chain management and financial modelling. Quantum computing will also likely influence drug discovery by advancing the designing of new pharmaceutical compounds and optimising drug properties.
But quantum computing will also drastically transform the field of cryptography, as quantum computers are capable of breaking traditional encryption algorithms. This systemic change could have a colossal impact on UC and collaboration.
How Will Quantum Computing Impact the UC Sector?
Quantum computing's ability to break traditional encryption threatens the security of the cloud and the internet at large, as attacks on security systems are based on combinations in parallel rather than sequentially.
Standard, asymmetric encrypted messaging, file sharing and email, such as those provided by services like What's App and Google's Gmail, could possibly be at risk of exposure. Nefarious individuals, organisations and states already exploit unencrypted data in 2023, and quantum computing could also be the key that unlocks their access to asymmetrically encrypted data. The potential cybersecurity and compliance ramifications are enormous.
"When we talk about broadening the framework of collaboration, we need to be broadening the framework of security around it as well," Vipin Tyagi, Chief Technology Officer, Executive Vice President of Strategic Relationships at PGi, told UC Today recently in an interview about the future of secure collaboration.
Is Everything About Quantum Computing's Impact on UC Concerning?
Nope. The advent of quantum computing is a double-edged sword.
While quantum computing can break these traditional asymmetric encryptions, in turn, its computational power also means it can offer more secure alternatives based on quantum mechanics principles. Quantum key distribution (QKD), for example, can produce secure communications channels based on these exact principles.
