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Integration refers to the information integration of diverse data from various data sources with applications. This process provides timely data access while meeting the knowledge and workload requirements of a facility and business, and requires computing for fidelity (or data that is not manipulated or distorted and produces genuine results), speed, scale, and agility.
The integration capability is assessed for current limitations and constraints in integrating operational data and applications that are hosted in edge and cloud environments. Limitations and constraints can be associated with incompatible interface protocols, data accessibility, data silos, vendor protected applications, legacy software, data ownership and trust, data latency, security, overhead application, and server overhead.
The maturity of this capability varies based on the current state and future requirements assessment of four compute locations, as shown in the following figure.
Far edge assessment focuses on application and data integration between the device edge, gateway edge, and compute edge.
Near edge assessment focuses on data integration between the far edge and near edge environments and their associated applications.
Cloud integration is assessed for edge-based data and application integration with cloud-hosted applications and storage.
Multicloud assessment refers to integration between edge computing and cloud computing environments to balance the data workloads for distributed computing. This approach fully realizes the value and availability of diverse data and applications to improve facility performance efficiencies.