By Allie Gallant | March 31st, 2016
The internet connects people, and increasingly, it also connects things. The Internet of Things is a tech buzzword that’s grown in popularity since arriving on the scene almost 2 decades ago. Tiny sensors implanted in everything from airplanes to toasters capture information every second. The sensors then transmit the information to the cloud, where it’s aggregated and analyzed. This is where “big data” is born.
New tools that harness the power of data are on the leading edge of the food industry. They make our businesses more productive and profitable. The most recent Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Global Food Safety Conference highlighted how data will play a bigger and bigger role in how we do business.
At the conference in Berlin, Germany, tech companies from around the world showcased innovative tools that seamlessly integrate big data into their operations. These tools extend our human capacity for information collection and interpretation exponentially, and display it in user-friendly formats that we can access from our computer, smart phone or tablet. In short, they create practical meaning out of the unfathomable mass of information stored in the cloud.