General Electric has seen the future of manufacturing and it involves competing with some very big technology companies.

G.E. is announcing on Wednesday a push into computer-based services, connecting sensors that are on machines to distant computing centers where data will be scanned for insights around things like performance, maintenance and supplies. The company plans to spend about $500 million annually building the business, according to the executive in charge.

“We think it will change the industrial world,” said William Ruh, the head of G.E.’s software business. “We’re talking about where an industrial company goes to get its applications.”

The move highlights how important the so-called Internet of Things, a term for matching sensors with cloud-computing systems, has become for some of the world’s biggest companies. G.E. expects revenue of $6 billion from software in 2015, a 50 percent increase in one year. Much of this is from a pattern-finding system called Predix.