Systems and methods described herein may involve an industrial network device that performs an operation based on symbolic data received via an input terminal. The systems and methods may involve processing circuitry coupled via an output terminal to the input terminal. The processing circuitry may provide a virtualized control system communicatively coupled to the industrial network device via the output terminal, receive an event notification from a first container provided by one or more computing devices external to the industrial automation system, operate the virtualized control system to expose the event notification via a symbolic common industrial protocol (CIP) namespace to provide the symbolic data to the input terminal based on the event notification, and transmit the symbolic data corresponding to the virtualized control system via the one or more input terminals to the industrial network device.