After managing to attract some 500,000 users to the cloud-based incarnation of Watson within less than a year of hitting general availability by making its core capabilities available at no charge, IBM Corp. is now aiming for the one million mark with a new set of freemium data models to go along. The common theme of the lineup is simplicity.

Each of the so-called Expert Storybooks that the company is rolling out to Watson Analytics offers a graphical interface for processing a specific kind of data provided courtesy of partners. There’s one IBM developed as part of its alliance with Twitter Inc. to help marketers gauge their brand reputation on social media, while another uses weather data to understand how factors like rain impact retail sales.

A total of nine Storybooks spanning almost as many use cases are slated to become available on Watson Analytics next month, with IBM strongly hinting that more are in the pipe. Users whose requirements are not fully met on launch can take solace in the new integrations that the company is adding in conjunction to expand the scope of information Watson Analytics is able to handle.

The main highlight is a set of connectors for a number of its top databases, including the dashDB in-memory store and Netezza, as well as third party sources like Amazon Inc.’s hugely-popular Redshift platform. They’re joined by a new gateway service that provides a secure channel through which organizations can pull information from their sensitive on-premise systems into Watson Analytics.

The catch is it’s only possible to import so much data into a Storybooks on a free account, which means that a business user looking to perform an analysis their organization’s operations on any substantial scale has to buy a paid subscription. As a result, not all of the half million who have signed up for Watson Analytics so far will be interested in using Storybooks on a regular basis, but converting even a fraction would represent a major gain for IBM.

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