IBM is dedicating more than 1,500 Internet of Things (IoT) experts to its new IoT Consulting Solutions to help customers tackle industry-specific IoT challenges. The Consulting Solutions will be based in IBM Watson headquarters in Munich, Germany, with offices in eight other IBM IoT centers in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

The IoT Consulting Solutions will consist of experts with industry expertise in areas like automotive, electronics, industrial products, insurance, retail, transportation, and buildings.

IBM client Ricoh is one of the first global organizations to work with consultants from IBM’s new group. The consultants helped Ricoh redesign its workplace to improve office collaboration and share information more easily.

IBM is also releasing specific versions of the Watson IoT platform for different industries, such as IBM Watson IoT for Manufacturing and the Watson IoT Platform for Automotive.

IBM also is providing free access to the Watson platform to developers that are working on IoT applications and helping them learn more about the platform through educational courses and tutorials developed with online education company Coursera.

In October, IBM invested $200 million to make Munich its global headquarters for the Watson IoT business. The company said it was going to use the money to develop new IoT capabilities using a private Blockchain system of coding to structure data and improve IoT security.