Hawaii: The Hawaii data center initiative survives the governor's $1 billion in state budget cuts

Despite budget cutbacks, Hawaii's government will proceed with a proposed data center relocation. Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii had to make use of his line-item override to cut the General Appropriations Bill of 2023 and balance Hawaii's fiscal strategy with $500 million in budget cuts, but he retained the intentions for moving the government's data center. The reduction is a result of the general fund estimates for Fiscal Year 2022/2023 falling from +2% to -1%. The Department of Accounting and General Services will move forward with the move of the government's data center, but with a budget of $1 million instead of $5m.

The data center for the State of Hawaii is presently located on the lower level of the government office Kalanimoku Building, which is approximately 50 years old and in a flood zone. Critical applications were moved to the University of Hawaii's (UH) two-year-old data facility in Manoa, Honolulu, in 2016 to "reduce risks" associated with the old-fashioned Kalanimoku building, while other IT applications were moved to a DRFortress center.  The UH IT Center encompasses 74,000 square feet on six floors to house the University's enterprise communications and information technology systems for instruction, administration, and research. In addition, there is an 8,000-square-foot data center on the premises for enterprise servers, storage, and comms. The University provides colocation in addition to VMware-hosted services.