IBM today said it will open Watson to more software developers with an API (application programming interface) developer toolkit and educational materials as part of a self-service cloud platform. Developers and software vendors can build applications that tie into a version of Watson hosted in the cloud, letting apps answer nearly any question a customer might ask.

The move comes more than two-and-a-half years after the artificial intelligence system destroyed some genius humans in a friendly game of Jeopardy. Watson was available to customers before today, being used to evaluate data on cancer treatments for example. But now IBM is expanding Watson's money-making capabilities, laying the groundwork for bringing it to more industries.

The "IBM Watson Developers Cloud" is "a cloud-hosted marketplace where application providers of all sizes and industries will be able to tap into resources for developing Watson-powered apps," Big Blue said.

Companies that build Watson-powered applications will take advantage of the system's data-crunching ability, using either their own data sets or data from the "IBM Watson Content Store, featuring third-party content that offers data-rich resources that can fuel Watson’s ever expanding knowledge." One data source available right off the bat comes from Healthline, providing a "comprehensive, contextually relevant health reference library."

The Watson cloud isn't yet an open service that anyone can access. Interested parties will have to submit an idea for using Watson. IBM said it is "gradually expanding" access and "experimenting with different ways to give access to ISVs that want to build a Powered by Watson application."

Ultimately, the plan is to make Watson available to anyone without such barriers, IBM Watson CTO Rob High told Ars. More than 500 IBM consultants are on hand to help customers through the development process, but IBM wants to make it intuitive enough that users will be able to handle everything on their own.

The feedback it gets from early customers will help IBM "make it as simple and straightforward and self-service as possible," High said. There's no word on timing of general availability, but High said, "we'll open it up eventually. The restrictions you see today are because we want to make sure the experience we develop has been vetted and validated."

IBM told Ars that the developer cloud itself is free. However, we assume that's just for test and development. Hosting a finished application on IBM's cloud will likely cost some money, but how much hasn't been announced.

See me, teach me

Part of the process of creating a Watson-fueled application is teaching Watson what it needs to know about your industry and customers. Watson will "ingest" information such as "articles and product literature and blogs," and learn the unique linguistics of each field, High said. For example, the abbreviation "PT" means "point" in finance but "patient" in health care. Customers have to feed information to Watson so it can learn the difference.

With a finished application, questions from users result in an API call being made to Watson, which produces an answer along with its confidence level in the answer and links to supporting evidence. Customers who need help with app development can take advantage of an IBM collaboration with Elance, an online marketplace for hiring freelancers. "Elance plans to create clouds where app providers can tap into highly skilled freelancers who are available on-demand to build Watson-enabled apps and have completed an IBM certification program," IBM said.

My, Watson, have you lost weight?

On the back-end, Watson runs on IBM's Power7 servers, in a much smaller footprint than what was required to beat Jeopardy.

"We have massively re-engineered the Watson runtime. ... In the case of Jeopardy the system was a 2,900-core, 15TB computer answering essentially single questions at a time," High said. "Alex Trebek was the only user, right? That was the case back in 2011. Since then we have dramatically reduced the footprint and increased the performance. Now we can run in a 16-core system with 256GB of memory as a base unit, and then we scale out using stateful clustering techniques. That allows us to increase or decrease the capacity based on demand, and we distribute that across the back-end server tiers."

Developers use a sandboxed instance of Watson when designing and developing their applications. Finished apps can be deployed on IBM's SoftLayer cloud or brought in-house, as IBM offers the option of hosting Watson on Power servers in customer data centers. Applications can be desktop, mobile, or Web-based—Watson doesn't discriminate, it just provides the answers.

What kinds of applications are possible? "[T]hrough the Watson Developer Cloud, a consumer-oriented ISV application could deliver a personalized guided selling experience online that can replicate the best in-store experience," IBM said. "Or, an airline could create virtual travel agents able to recommend the perfect destination tailored to the user’s unique needs."

IBM spotlighted three Watson-powered applications expected to become commercially available in 2014. Fluid, a company that makes online shopping technology for retail businesses, is developing something called a Fluid Expert Personal Shopper. "The app calls upon Watson's ability to understand the nuances of human language and uncover answers from Big Data," IBM said. "Consumers who use Fluid's app will interact with rich media and dialogue with Watson, as their newfound 'cognitive, expert personal shopper.' The Fluid app incorporates the information users share and questions they ask to help them make smart, satisfying purchases by putting a knowledgeable sales associate in the hands of consumers, on demand."

MD Buyline, a supply chain technology provider for hospitals and health care companies, is similarly using Watson to develop an application called Hippocrates that lets "clinical and financial users make real-time, informed decisions about medical device purchases."

Welltok, which also makes health care software, is developing an app that helps consumers create personal itineraries for leading healthy lives. "By leveraging Watson's ability to learn from every interaction, the app will offer insights tailored to each individual’s health needs," IBM said.

IBM is expecting Watson-fueled applications and services to be a big business. It's even working with venture capital firms to identify startups that might be worthy of investment. Make your pitch—and hold your hand out for some cash.