Washington State Azure Cloud

The Washington State Azure Cloud provides customers with a secure Azure environment approved by the Office of Cyberscurity (OCS), located within all U.S. Azure regions. Using the Azure portal, customers have on-demand access to a customer-specific networking environment that allows for rapid provisioning of resources to include Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, and Software as a Service solutions.

The Washington State Public Cloud infrastructures eliminate the need for capital expenditures by the customer and allows them to realize cost savings compared to physical server environments.

Features & Benefits

Summary of services provided by WaTech

• Shared “Highway to the Cloud” over a shared Express Route circuit.
• Integrated top-down state policies applied automatically with audit mode enabled for multiple compliance offerings such as NIST 800-53 Rev. 5 and HIPAA.
• Identity governance and access management across the tenant.
  • Supports Enterprise Active Directory (EAD) authentication through Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) for identity management.
• Data stored across as many or as few Microsoft datacenters as required, scales with cost.
• Consulting and assistance with Security Design Review service.
• The environment can evolve to comply with future state Office of Cybersecurity standards.
• vNET design and configuration.
• Disaster recovery using Zerto Disaster Recovery orchestration tools (optional with fees).
• Enterprise Backup Services utilizing Veeam Backup and Recovery (optional with fees).

Brief summary of services provided by Microsoft

• Automated self-provisioning via the Azure Portal.
• Pay only for what you use, without upfront payments and long-term commitments.
• Quickly upscale or downscale resources like compute power and capacity.
• Deploy apps in multiple regions around the U.S.
• Reduce the total cost of ownership by eliminating the need to maintain data centers.
• SQL, NoSQL, Postgres database capacity, Database as a service.
• Data warehouses as required for large data analytics.
• Azure Vault utilizes FIPS-140-2 Level 2 and 3 validated hardware security modules (HSMs), allows for creation and import of encryption keys in minutes. Cloud scaling and global redundancy without applications having direct access to keys.
• Azure Site Recovery and Server Backup allows for disaster recovery of both on-premises and in-cloud resources.
• Broad framework, language, and tool support.
  • Containerization for development and production environments requiring microservices.
• Azure virtual networking.
• Provides access to hundreds of services ranging from compute and storage services to various analytics and security applications.
• AI and machine learning available within the Azure environment.

Summary of customer responsibilities

• Bring your own license (BYOL) or purchase from Microsoft.
• Provisioning of applications, storage, compute after the Subscription environment has been created.
• Compliance with security standards.

Pricing

Customers will be responsible for all costs associated with assigned Azure subscriptions.  There will be a 5% administrative charge applied to total cost of each account.  These charges cover onboarding costs, Highway to the Cloud, Azure Express Route, billing administration, Azure service contracts, redundant Fortinet firewalls, and Entra ID SSO Integration.

Pre-Service Requirements

• To obtain services from WaTech, eligible organizations must first enter into a Master Service Agreement (MSA). See if you qualify for an MSA.

How to Order

Contact the WaTech Support Center to schedule an operational consultation.

• Submit a ticket through our Customer Portal.
• Phone: 360.586.1000 or 1.855.WaTech1 (1.855.928.3241)
• Email: support@watech.wa.gov

If you have questions or need assistance regarding a strategic consultation, please contact your agency Business Relationship Manager (BRM).