Google LLC and FogHorn Systems Inc., an “internet of things” analytics startup backed by General Electric Co., today announced a new partnership that aims to help companies better harness the the data they collect from their connected devices.

The alliance will center on the search giant’s Cloud IoT Core offering. Launched last month, the service enables enterprises to centrally manage their connected devices and analyze the data they generate.

As part the collaboration with FogHorn, Google will integrate Cloud IoT Core with the startup’s flagship Lightning analytics platform. The move is aimed at letting cloud customers better process important sensory measurements too urgent to be sent across the network to one of the search giant’s data centers. Thanks to the integration, companies are set to gain the ability to process such information onsite for faster results.

A plant operator, for example, could harness FogHorn’s Lightning to look for problem indicators in sensory data generated by production equipment. The fact that information doesn’t have to be transmitted to a remote location can enable engineers to pick up malfunctions faster. Plus, it lowers the dependence on having a steady internet connection, which in turn reduces the risk of outages.

Manufacturing is just one of several areas where Google and FogHorn see the integration coming handy. The companies also listed the smart building, renewable energy, mining and utility sectors among the areas industries where it could be applied.

What enables Lightning to support such a wide range of use cases is a “highly miniaturized complex event processing event” capable of running on a broad spectrum of industrial devices. Lightning also includes an artificial intelligence component that lets companies use machine learning models to find patterns in records as they’re ingested.

Partnering with outside providers such as FogHorn enables Google to fill gaps in its feature set faster than if it were to develop them from scratch in-house. This is the same reason why the company recently teamed up with another startup, Appthority Inc., to help companies protect employees’ Android devices from malicious applications that may slip by Google Play’s native detection mechanisms.

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