Office of Enterprise Technology Services

HONOLULU – After two years of collaborative planning between ETS’ Executive Branch stakeholder departments and commercial partners, migration from the physical mainframe computers in the Kalanimoku ETS Data Center to a managed service (referred to Mainframe as a Service or MFaaS)  in Omaha, Nebraska was completed in Jan. 2022. A disaster recovery site is also located in a different state.

The  Mainframe has far exceeded its useful life and the ETS Kalanimoku Data Center is no longer suitable for hosting Mainframe operations based on the age and design of the infrastructure. The new MFaaS operation provides us with a vastly superior platform in state-of-the-art data centers and a disaster recovery model  in two different states.

The MFaaS model provides the flexibility to scale mainframe resources down as large applications modernize and migrate off the mainframe. This means that the state can, for example, reduce processor, memory, and storage resources as large applications move from the mainframe to other platforms. The reduction of resources permits renegotiating lower costs associated with operating the mainframe.

Departments with large applications who transitioned off the Mainframe and are now using MFaaS include:  ATG/CSEA , DAGS, DHS, and DLIR. Departments with smaller applications include B&F, DOE, DOH, and DOT Highways.