D-Wave has introduced service-level agreements (SLAs) for its quantum computing cloud service.

The company last week announced the introduction of service-level agreements (SLAs) specifically tailored for its Leap quantum cloud service customers who are transitioning applications into production.

By establishing formal SLAs, D-Wave said it “stands behind the high levels of availability, reliability, and scalability” of its Leap service and its ability to support requirements for commercial-grade quantum applications.

The exact terms of the SLAs were not shared, but the company said Leap can offer 99.9 percent uptime and availability with sub-second solve times, even under heavy customer usage. DCD has reached out for more information.

Launched in 2018, the Leap quantum cloud service provides real-time access to D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers.

D-Wave said its Leap service has consistently exceeded 99.9 percent availability for its Solver API and its aggregated set of annealing quantum computers over the past two years.

Since the launch of the Leap service, D-Wave said customers have run nearly 200 million jobs without having to schedule work in advance, queue times, or work around unavailable hardware – including 60 million jobs submitted in the last 12 months.

“As the transition to production deployments accelerates, providing exceptional access to our cloud service has never been more critical,” said Dr. Trevor Lanting, chief development officer of D-Wave. “Our SLA offering is designed to support this dynamic shift with confidence, enabling businesses to thrive as quantum technology’s commercial value and adoption grows.”

As well as offering on-premise deployments, most quantum computing providers offer access to their systems through cloud portals – either their own or via major cloud providers through APIs. Most companies in the space are still going through a maturing phase to reach the five-nines level of availability offered by classical cloud computing providers.

Despite increasing compute power, many quantum systems remain sensitive to the environment they are hosted in and are highly technical systems that can be slow to repair. Supercooled quantum processors often require several days of downtime as the fridges they are hosted in can require many hours to cool down and warm up. A limited number of available quantum computers from providers also means customer jobs are often queued onto shared systems.

“When it comes to incorporating quantum computing into a company’s overall IT infrastructure, organizations should consider prioritizing a real-time production-grade quantum cloud service that offers the kind of assurances that service-level agreements provide,” said Heather West, PhD, research manager and analyst with IDC. “Technology leaders should have the same expectations of quantum cloud services that they do for any software-as-a-service, with reliability and accessibility leading their decision criteria.”

D-Wave is currently facing a potential delisting from the New York Stock Exchange over the low price of its stock.