A data-centric architecture completely changes how we manage vehicle fleets through integrated, real-time data flow. Imagine all the various telemetry streams – vehicle location, speed, driver behavior, engine performance, fuel efficiency, plus external information such as road conditions, weather and traffic – flowing freely through a distributed architecture. This session will discuss how a data-centric architecture fundamentally reorients fleet management systems from disparate, application-specific silos to a unified, integrated data layer. Instead of applications owning and isolating their data, a data-centric approach treats data as a shared, first-class asset, accessible and governable across the entire ecosystem. It will reference the COVESA VSS open data model, which addresses a critical challenge in fleet management: the inherent heterogeneity of data formats across diverse vehicle types and OEM systems.