Technology access in Brazil, as in many countries, is rarely a simple question of whether internet connectivity is available. For a large proportion of individuals and organisations, the more immediate obstacle is whether the hardware they have access to can actually run the software and services they need. Arlequim Technologies was founded in 2021 to address that specific problem. Through cloud-based virtualization, the company improves the effective performance of existing devices — allowing users to get more from equipment they already own rather than replacing it.
The founding of Arlequim came at a moment when Brazilian technology adoption was accelerating across multiple sectors. Remote work had expanded rapidly, placing new demands on devices that had previously been used for lighter tasks. Cloud services, streaming platforms, and data-intensive applications were becoming standard rather than specialist tools. And in the gaming sector, a growing player base was encountering hardware requirements that their equipment frequently could not meet. Each of these developments reinforced the case for a service that could lift the performance ceiling of existing hardware without requiring users to enter the market for new devices.
Haroldo Jacobovicz brought a particular vantage point to this opportunity. His career in technology began in the early 1990s, when computerisation in Brazil was still finding its footing in both the private and public sectors. His experience at the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant as an advisor to the Technical Director had shown him how the transition to computerised systems worked — and where it stalled — within large public institutions. The computer rental business he subsequently built, Minauro, was a direct response to those observed constraints: a model designed to make technology available to government agencies through service contracts rather than capital purchases. That business grew through acquisition into the e-Governe Group, which continued to serve municipal governments across Brazil.
The years he spent building Horizons Telecom from 2010 onward added further dimension to his understanding of how infrastructure provision shapes digital participation. Telecommunications access, he observed, had downstream effects on what businesses and communities could achieve — effects that went well beyond connectivity itself. When Jacobovicz turned his attention to Arlequim Technologies, this accumulated perspective on access, infrastructure, and service design fed directly into how the company was conceived.
Arlequim’s three target markets — corporate clients, public sector organisations, and retail consumers focused on gaming — each represent a version of the same underlying problem. Hardware ages, software requirements rise, and the users in between face a gap that conventional solutions address only through replacement. The virtualization model offers a structurally different answer, one that works within the financial and logistical realities that make replacement difficult for a large share of potential users.
Brazil’s gaming community, which now includes close to three-quarters of the country’s internet users, represents both the most visible and the most rapidly growing expression of that gap. For Haroldo Jacobovicz, the retail gaming focus is not a departure from the access-oriented thinking that has shaped his career — it is a direct extension of it, applied to one of the fastest-moving segments of Brazil’s digital economy.