Few events tested the resilience of digital infrastructure as bluntly as the COVID-19 pandemic. When remote work became unavoidable, the gaps in connectivity, hardware, and preparedness became impossible to ignore. Haroldo Jacobovicz observed firsthand how that moment exposed the fragility of the foundation Brazil had built.
Companies that had functioned adequately on basic connections found themselves relying on video conferencing, collaborative platforms, and secure remote access — tools that demanded far more than their infrastructure was designed to handle. Platforms built for users with faster connections failed people whose only option was low-bandwidth internet. The divide between who could work remotely and who could not mapped closely onto existing economic lines.
Jacobovicz does not describe that period solely in terms of failure, though. The crisis generated something valuable: a collective recognition that digital infrastructure is essential, not optional. The demand that emerged, and the speed with which people adapted when circumstances required it, demonstrated that the desire and capacity for digital participation existed well beyond the populations that were already well-served.
That awareness produced a lasting legacy. The pandemic compressed years of digital transformation into a shorter period, creating both urgency and opportunity. It also exposed where investment had been inadequate and where policy had assumed a readiness that was not there.
His work with Arlequim addresses part of this gap directly. The company’s computer virtualization approach allows older devices to access modern applications by processing demanding tasks remotely and returning the output to whatever screen the user has. A machine that would have been left behind by the demands of remote work — too slow for video calls, too limited for collaborative software — becomes capable when computation happens remotely.
This matters for the workforce as much as for education. Access to digital tools determines access to economic opportunity. When the barrier is a device that is three or four years out of date, the virtualization model eliminates it without requiring the user to spend money they may not have.
The pandemic made visible what advocates for digital inclusion had been arguing for years: that infrastructure gaps are not a peripheral concern but a structural one. Jacobovicz sees the legacy of that period as an acceleration — one that advanced the case for digital transformation more forcefully than years of incremental progress had managed to do.