The landmark $3 billion investment that IBM Corp. announced earlier this year to expand its plans for monetizing the connected universe is starting to bear fruit. The company launched four new services today at the inauguration event for the Munich office charged with leading the push that apply the capabilities of Watson to helping organizations process the growing amounts of real-time information flowing into their data centers from the edge of the network.

Big Blue is placing a particular emphasis on automatically generated signals like the kind that motion sensors in a factory might send out when a forklift crosses into a restricted area. Machine Learning Watson API, the first of the offerings unveiled this morning, makes it possible to set up an algorithm that can pick out such warnings from the turret of routine diagnostics data crossing the network every second and determine how to react based on the severity of the incident. A few moments spent too close to an expensive piece of machinery might thus lead to nothing more than a notice getting sent to the driver’s mobile device, whereas a collision would be instantly escalated to the plant manager.

Organizations will be able to handle the video from their surveillance cameras with the same level of automation using the complementary object recognition service that Big Blue is rolling out in conjunction. It’s joined by a Siri-like voice interface aimed at allowing the person on the other end of the feed to quickly understand the situation. The plant manager could ask Watson about the kind and price of the machinery damaged in the collision with the forklift so that they can start writing an incident report for the higher-ups immediately.

Rounding out the launch is a textual analysis service for processing the user-generated data that often accompanies sensory transmissions in such situations. That encompasses everything from maintenance records to complaints on social media from customers frustrated with order delays caused by a manufacturing delay. Big Blue will no doubt add more services to the lineup as the use of connected devices continues to widen in the enterprise and the monetization opportunities increase accordingly.

Image via Geralt