A system and method provide cognitive computing services, comprising: one or more Internet of Things (IoT) sensors; an edge analytics device that performs a preliminary analysis of the IoT sensor data; a cloud computing device of the cloud environment that stores a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for interfacing between the cloud environment and the IoT sensors and an underlying infrastructure; an analytics device that performs analytics on the IoT sensor data; and a cognitive computing device that regulates one or more of the IoT sensors or the edge analytics device by modifying one or more rules performed by the one or more of the IoT sensors or the edge analytics device.