We have crossed over from the age of “experimentation” to a time of “multiplied innovation,” where key technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and the “internet of things” will scale rapidly inside the enterprise world.

That’s the central thesis offered by Frank Gens (pictured), senior vice president and chief analyst of IDC Research Inc. Gens presented his analysis at the Actifio conference in Boston, this week and made it clear that the rocket fuel behind this time of scalable innovation is applications.

“We think that in the next five years, we’ll see as many new apps developed and deployed as we saw developed and deployed over the last 40 years,” Gens said. “A lot of white spaces that have been white for decades are going to start to get a lot of cool colors. To me, that is the revolution.”

Gens spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Actifio Data Driven event. They discussed the significance of recent acquisitions by large tech platform companies and whether it’s time for regulators to intervene (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Big Tech steps on the gas

Surrounding the acceleration of innovation at scale has been recent activity by major tech platform companies to strengthen enterprise solutions portfolios. This can be seen in acquisitions such as Google LLC’s purchase of Looker Data Sciences Inc., a business intelligence company, and Salesforce Inc.’s buyout of Tableau Inc., a leader in big data analytics, according to Gens.

“Those companies are all stepping on the gas to become better platforms,” Gens said. “They’re creeping up into that world of business apps, and I don’t think they’re going to stop.”

This consolidation of power and economic influence in the business world has also led to increased questions around whether Big Tech is getting too big and should be broken up by regulators. Is it time for the government to step in?

“When you get an aggregated portfolio of technical capabilities that allow innovation to happen, you typically see consolidation around those platforms,” Gens explained. “Of course, they give life to a lot of competition and growth on top of them, and that, to me, is the conundrum. If you attack the platform, you may send us back be being disaggregated, less creative.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Actifio Data Driven event. Neither Actifio Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE