Maximizing efficiency in cloud and edge cloud data centers was a hot topic at Google Cloud Next ’26.
A major focus of these discussions was the industry-wide shift from hypervisor-based virtual machine (VM) to cloud-native compute. While hypervisor technology has been around for two decades, it is increasingly showing its age. Total cost of operations is growing significantly across all dimensions, including licensing, hardware, operations, and efficiency. And it’s harder to find IT people who are trained and experienced in this technology.
To get a real-world perspective on this shift, we invited Marcio Talhacolo, CEO of INFORMO Tecnologia, to the Rakuten Cloud booth to speak about the critical transition facing Latin American enterprises as they move away from legacy infrastructure.
His message: Hypervisor-based virtual networks are expensive and inefficient, but migrating with Rakuten Cloud is both easy and cost-effective.
The reliance on legacy VM-based processes has reached a breaking point. Moving them to a public cloud might seem like a solution, but Talhacolo noted that Brazil, like many other countries, has strict regulations that make it a challenge to use public hyperscalers for some workloads. With compute resources in multiple neighboring countries, hyperscalers can’t guarantee that data won’t be processed and stored in other countries.
Beyond regulatory hurdles, Talhacolo also pointed out that the cost of using data centers is high and getting more expensive.
“The challenge is how we can use our infrastructure better without using the public cloud,” Talhacolo said, “while keeping the same business model and ease of use inside our own data center. And of course, the most important point is how to reduce our investment, moving from CAPEX to OPEX or at least reducing CAPEX.”
To address these pain points, he recommended using the Rakuten Cloud software suite to create “an environment that lets us bring our data back from public data centers to our own data center. We can use less hardware, fewer resources, and fewer people to take care of our data.”
Talhacolo really embraced the Rakuten Cloud solution. “This technology is amazing because in the same cluster, we can run traditional virtual machines and Kubernetes-based microservices, converging all services into a single environment. A single cluster can host both Kubernetes containers and virtual machines.
Compared to traditional VM-based solutions, Rakuten Cloud reduces licensing costs, requires less hardware, and provides extensive orchestration, enabling fewer staff members to manage more clusters.
When planning a hypervisor transition, the Rakuten Cloud solution follows a four-phase framework that automates discovery, planning, migration, and integration. Talhacolo said his team has used this framework with customers in Brazil to migrate environments with between 80 and 100 virtual machines in a matter of weeks.
One great example of how the solution works is Informo customer 4EDGE, a certified Tier III Brazilian data center provider with five locations across the country. The company’s fast-growing virtualization licensing costs began eroding profit margins as demand for edge computing and hybrid cloud services accelerated.
To address this, 4EDGE embraced KubeVirt, a technology that enables legacy virtual machines to run as Kubernetes pods — same cluster, same management, same scaling. With KubeVirt, which is supported by the Rakuten Cloud solution, 4EDGE eliminated 100% of its virtualization license costs.
The solution delivered a performance improvement of more than 30% and boosted resource utilization by more than 60%
The Rakuten Cloud solution includes Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform, Rakuten Cloud-Native Storage and Rakuten Cloud Native Orchestrator. Talhacolo has seen this solution in action, and he’s a big supporter.
“So, the key point is with this technology, with Rakuten Cloud, we can do more with less. Less people, less resources, less money,” he said. “It's very, very easy to use day-by-day. But most importantly, it's very, very easy to change your solution today to this solution.”
To hear more of Talhacolo’s insights, along with more details on the 4Edge migration, watch the full video of the talk at this link.
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