Universal Containers has a large amount of data that currently lives in a system outside...

Salesforce Connect is designed to provide real-time access to data stored outside of Salesforce, allowing users to view and interact with external data as if it were native within Salesforce. This is ideal for Universal Containers since they only need access to a subset of the external data rather than migrating it entirely into Sales Cloud.

Real-Time Data Access: Salesforce Connect provides users with access to up-to-date information from external systems, which is especially useful for large datasets that don’t need full integration.

Efficiency in Data Management: This approach avoids data duplication and maintains external system performance by only referencing the necessary records.

Option A (external objects counting against custom object limits) is incorrect, as external objects have their own limits separate from custom objects. Option B (using with on-premises systems) is incorrect, as Salesforce Connect can work with both cloud and on-premises data sources. For more, see the Salesforce Connect Overview.