A method is provided for managing availabillity of runtime asset data used by client applications hosted on workstations of an industrial system, the method including distributing runtime asset data about assets of the industrial system received at the plurality of workstations among runtime asset data caches associated with the client applications. At least a portion of locally stored runtime asset data stored on a local runtime asset data cache is replicated and stored remotely on the runtime asset data cache associated with another client application. The locally stored runtime asset data is periodically evaluated to determine if it is up-to-date, and in response to determining it is not up-to-date, the locally stored runtime asset data is updated by requesting and retrieving a replicated and updated version of the locally stored runtime asset data from the runtime asset data cache remotely storing the replicated version.