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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Manoa Innovation Center revamping its operations

By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer

Tenants at the Manoa Innovation Center will have access this fall to outsourced technical services, help from the University of Hawai'i and mentoring from local business experts, center officials said yesterday.

The changes are part of a plan to improve operations at the state-run technology incubator.

They should make the center more efficient, flexible and sympathetic to its several dozen tenants — and better at its mission of creating viable high-tech companies and jobs, said manager Mike Possedi, who was hired this summer to revamp the eight-year-old, 46,000-square-foot center.

Some elements of Possedi's plan:

• The University of Hawai'i will use the center as a source for projects and jobs for its College of Business Administration students. Beginning next semester, client companies can request help from UH professors, who may incorporate the projects into their classes.

• The center's Internet connection will be upgraded from 10 megabytes per second to 100 megabytes per second, enough capacity for about 3,000 standard personal-computer modems.

• Web hosting and e-mail systems will be outsourced, instead of using state computers. New tenants will be offered special discounts from participating companies for Web and e-mail services. Possedi said this would free up state computers, which lack the speed, capacity and redundant power needed to sustain a commercial enterprise.

• The center will spend between $80,000 and $100,000 of state money this fall to upgrade its backbone computer network with new Cisco equipment, and will spend an estimated $100,000 to install new communications cabling. An anti-hacker "firewall" also will be added to keep the system safe from intruders and computer viruses, which occasionally have plagued the center.

The center also wants to get corporate sponsors, set up a network of professional mentors for tenants, and attract more government and foundation grant money, Possedi said.

Also being hammered out are procedures to accept equity from tenants in lieu of rent.

State officials said the changes would let center staff focus less on the day-to-day issues of running the building and more on helping tenants.

"Past managers have had to deal with managing the building, less on helping tenants," said Nola Miyasaki, executive director and chief executive of the High Technology Development Corp., the state agency that controls the center.

Most of the Manoa Innovation Center's tenant companies are start-up technology firms.

The center has struggled in recent years as its infrastructure aged, the economy slowed and the flow of "graduating" tenants slowed, leaving less space for new tenants.

In 2001, a revamped rent structure and other reforms have led many older tenants to depart. Occupancy is about 85 to 90 percent.