Central to the functioning of any IIoT systems is ubiquitous connectivity. Connectivity facilitates interoperability, integration, and composability among the endpoints. 

An information exchange infrastructure enables technical interoperability, or the ability to exchange bits and bytes, and is a prerequisite to syntactic interoperability, which is the ability to exchange information using common protocols.

Connectivity is made up of two functional layers:

• The communication transport layer is the mechanism for carrying messages between endpoints, providing technical interoperability
• The connectivity framework facilitates syntactic interoperability between endpoints, typically using common data structures and schemas

A data services framework cross-cutting function builds on the communications and connectivity frameworks to facilitate syntactic interoperability