“That’s not something we thought of when we started with Watson,” said John E. Kelly III, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for research.

I.B.M.’s Watson projects are not yet big money makers. But the projects, according to Frank Gens, chief analyst for IDC, make the case that I.B.M. has the advanced technology and deep industry expertise to do things other technology suppliers cannot, which should be a high-margin business and give I.B.M. an edge as a strategic partner with major customers. And the new Watson offerings, he said, are services that future users might be able to tap into through a smartphone or tablet.

That could significantly broaden the market for Watson, Mr. Gens said, as well as ward off potential competition if question-answering technology from consumer offerings, like Apple’s Siri and Google, improve.

“It will take years for these consumerized technologies to compete with Watson, but that day could certainly come,” Mr. Gens said.

John Baldoni, senior vice president for technology and science at GlaxoSmithKline, got in touch with I.B.M. shortly after watching Watson’s “Jeopardy” triumph. He was struck that Watson frequently had the right answer, he said, “but what really impressed me was that it so quickly sifted out so many wrong answers.”

That is a huge challenge in drug discovery, which amounts to making a high-stakes bet, over years of testing, on the success of a chemical compound. The failure rate is high. Improving the odds, Mr. Baldoni said, could have a huge payoff economically and medically.

Glaxo and I.B.M. researchers put Watson through a test run. They fed it all the literature on malaria, known anti-malarial drugs and other chemical compounds. Watson correctly identified known anti-malarial drugs, and suggested 15 other compounds as potential drugs to combat malaria. The two companies are now discussing other projects.