With this invention, expert knowledge from machine manufacturers is applied quickly at any time to a machine via the internet, by providing a main computer (host) for the production and provision of machine-related data and/or services and a machine-side working computer (client), which is connected to the main computer via a data communication link and (client) machine state data can be acquired in real time and transmitted to the main computer, and machine-related data and/or services generated by the main computer as a function of such machine state data can be received by an analysis and evaluation unit.