Kyverno Certified for Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform

The News:

Rakuten Symphony and Nirmata announced the successful testing and certification of the Kyverno policy engine for the Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform and Cloud-Native Storage. This integration provides Kubernetes users with enhanced governance, compliance, and security controls, tailored for high-assurance industries such as finance and healthcare. Read the original announcement here.

Analysis

According to industry analysts, 87% of organizations view governance and compliance as critical barriers to Kubernetes adoption at scale. Kyverno’s integration into Rakuten Cloud reduces this friction by delivering built-in governance with minimal operational overhead. It also reflects a broader market shift toward platform-led, policy-driven cloud-native architectures—an area where CNCF projects like Kyverno are gaining significant traction. The ability to unify automation, observability, and compliance into one cohesive stack is a core requirement for enterprise platform teams, and Rakuten Symphony is meeting that need head-on.

Cloud-Native Governance in Focus

As enterprises scale their cloud-native initiatives, Kubernetes remains a central component for orchestration. However, concerns around policy enforcement, compliance, and security posture continue to challenge operations teams—particularly in regulated industries. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) notes that 96% of organizations are using or evaluating Kubernetes, but only 29% feel confident in their security capabilities. Solutions like Kyverno are stepping in to fill that gap. As Paul Nashawaty of theCUBE Research has emphasized, the growth of platform engineering is driving demand for declarative policy frameworks that can scale across hybrid and edge environments without overwhelming developers or infrastructure teams.

Rakuten Symphony’s Enterprise Strategy

The certification of Kyverno into Rakuten Symphony’s Cloud-Native Platform and Storage offerings reinforces Rakuten’s focus on delivering secure, automated, and high-performance cloud-native solutions. The synergy between Kyverno’s policy-as-code model and Rakuten’s declarative interfaces creates a powerful governance layer without introducing programming complexity. This is critical as Rakuten targets sectors like finance, healthcare, and AI—where both compliance and agility are non-negotiable.

Previous Developer Challenges

Historically, Kubernetes users have relied on third-party scripts or complex operators to enforce security policies, often leading to fragmented configurations and runtime inconsistencies. Developers were often bottlenecked by infrastructure and platform teams due to manual governance practices. As McKinsey reports, developers spend up to 40% of their time managing infrastructure-related tasks instead of writing code. Tools like Kyverno, now deeply embedded within Rakuten Cloud, allow teams to automate these processes with fine-grained policy control and real-time enforcement.

What Changes for Developers

With Kyverno and Rakuten Cloud-Native integration, developers can now rely on centralized, declarative policy management—enabling secure self-service provisioning of Kubernetes workloads. This lowers time-to-deployment, reduces misconfiguration risk, and aligns with enterprise compliance mandates. Kyverno’s ability to mutate and validate workloads at runtime ensures that production environments remain consistent and secure—even in multi-cluster or multi-cloud scenarios. The inclusion of Nirmata’s Control Hub further streamlines policy lifecycle management, enhancing security without limiting velocity.

Looking Ahead

As cloud-native adoption grows, the need for robust and scalable policy management will become even more critical. Industry analysts forecast that 75% of organizations will standardize on policy-as-code tools like Kyverno by 2026 to secure Kubernetes environments at scale. Rakuten’s early integration with Kyverno places it ahead of this trend, offering a differentiated platform for regulated industries and complex multi-cloud environments.

This move positions Rakuten Cloud as a competitive player in the enterprise cloud market by combining operational simplicity with security-first design. Future enhancements could include AI-driven policy recommendations, automated drift remediation, and broader ecosystem integrations—extending the value proposition even further for global enterprise customers.

Paul Nashawaty

Paul Nashawaty, Practice Leader and Lead Principal Analyst, specializes in application modernization across build, release and operations. With a wealth of expertise in digital transformation initiatives spanning front-end and back-end systems, he also possesses comprehensive knowledge of the underlying infrastructure ecosystem crucial for supporting modernization endeavors. With over 25 years of experience, Paul has a proven track record in implementing effective go-to-market strategies, including the identification of new market channels, the growth and cultivation of partner ecosystems, and the successful execution of strategic plans resulting in positive business outcomes for his clients.
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Samantha Weston

Bringing more than a decade of varying experience crossing multiple sectors such as legal, financial, and tech, Sam Weston is an accomplished professional that excels in ensuring success across various industries. Currently, Sam serves as an Industry Analyst at Efficiently Connected where she collaborates closely in the areas of application modernization, DevOps, storage, and infrastructure. With a keen eye for research, Sam produces valuable insights and custom content to support strategic initiatives and enhance market understanding. Rooted in the fields of tech, law, finance operations and marketing, Sam provides a unique viewpoint to her position, fostering innovation and delivering impactful solutions within the industry. Sam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems and Business Analytics from Colorado State University and is passionate about leveraging her diverse skill set to drive growth and empower clients to succeed.
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