Cloud Highway

WaTech's Cloud Highway service delivers secure, high-speed connectivity to mission-critical cloud services. With the Cloud Highway, state agencies can focus on improving their online business services rather than worry about the underlying technologies supporting them, while taking advantage of savings associated with economies of scale.

Our Cloud Highway service provides physical security, speed, identity management and networking, all through an advanced infrastructure with an average uptime so close to perfect that you'd be hard-pressed to find anything comparable. The service includes proactive monitoring and continual support. WaTech's Cloud Highway is the best route to a growing digital ecosystem that includes industry leaders such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Oracle, NetApp and many more.

How does WaTech's Cloud Highway service work?

Cloud highway architectural diagram

WaTech's Cloud Highway service extends the state's network(s) from both the State Data Center (SDC) in Olympia and the state's disaster recovery data center in Quincy (QDC) to the Seattle Westin Building Exchange (WBX). This is via high-speed ethernet connectivity (see the figure below). By leveraging the Seattle data center operated by Equinix, the state takes advantage of the company's world-class physical security with an average uptime of greater than 99.9999%. This occurs by extending the state's perimeter to the closest point possible in relation to the public cloud environments by decreasing the amount of infrastructure (number of hops) that customer traffic will traverse. WaTech's strategy places state agencies at the front door of cloud service providers like Microsoft and Amazon, delivering a high-performance, low-latency service that state agencies require (and deserve).

From there, Equinix provides carrier-class cross connects from the Westin's Meet Me Room (MMR) to WaTech's network infrastructure in Equinix's data center (representing the state's network edge). This enables access to the world's largest ecosystem of public clouds, data, Internet of Things (IoT) and the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) Fabric. WaTech then works to partner with customers and providers to establish physical and logical connectivity, enabling customers to access cloud provider services via the Cloud Highway.

Features & Benefits

Why is WaTech's Cloud Highway service a better solution for state agencies?

The value propositions of WaTech's Cloud Highway service include:

  • Improved Performance - Predictable traffic flows delivering your business-critical applications and services with greater uptime and enhanced responsiveness state agencies have come to expect from an IT service provider.
  • Reliability - Secure, dependable and stable connectivity (transport) to public cloud resources state agencies can trust.
  • Flexibility - Offers state agencies the freedom to choose on-premises or cloud-based solutions, or a hybrid of both (depending on the agency's business needs).
  • Cost Efficiency - Enables state agencies to reduce the cost of doing business by leveraging WaTech's economies of scale, which decreases cloud provider utilization (egress) fees and minimizes technical resource requirements.
  • Accessibility - Provides connectivity to 120+ cloud providers, 175+ companies, 400+ IT service providers, and 900+ networks, enabling access to a multitude of cost-effective computing, storage and mobile solutions via the WBX in Seattle, Washington.
  • Availability - Service level objective is 99.90% (equating to less than 43.83 minutes of downtime per month), excluding scheduled and emergency maintenance available 24/7/365.
  • Scalability - Easily scales as demand within the state grows; customers can scale their bandwidth as they require and only pay for what they need.
  • Supportability - WaTech's Network Operations Center (NOC) and Support Center provide 24/7/365 coverage with proactive monitoring, event notifications and troubleshooting of disruptions in services relating to the Cloud Highway.
  • Inside Edge - WaTech's focus is on state government; WaTech is a cost-recoverable state agency, not a for-profit telecommunications service provider.

Please refer to WaTech's Cloud Highway Service Summary Pamphlet for a condensed version of this information.

Pricing

To fully understand each customer's unique business requirements, technical constraints/restraints (specifications) and provide each customer with a superior customer experience, WaTech's Architecture and Consulting Team provides a customer engagement experience for each Cloud Highway service request. WaTech's Architecture and Consulting Team will work with each customer to gather customer requirements, technical specifications, business intent and objectives in order to compile connectivity options for customers to consider.

WaTech Cloud Highway Architectural and Consulting Fee
Non-Recurring Cost $8,100

WaTech's architectural and consulting fee recovers the resource costs to engineer, design and develop technical solutions to how state agencies can connect to public cloud services. This one-time cost also includes WaTech project management services to assist state agencies in their migration onto WaTech's Cloud Highway.

Notes: Technical solutions involving a combination of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings and involving two cloud environments are covered under the single $8,100 fee. Technical solutions involving two public cloud environments if bundled together (at the same time) are covered under a single $8,100 fee. Customers migrating from one public cloud environment to another public cloud environment would need to pay for another Architectural & Design fee to enable the connectivity since this change request would initiate a new onboarding process.

WaTech's Cloud Highway service is a subscription service billed monthly. Billing occurs in the months when services are provided.

 

Cloud Highway Service Capacity Tiers MRC
Cloud Hwy - 50 Mb $200
Cloud Hwy - 200 Mb $775
Cloud Hwy - 500 Mb $1,925
Cloud Hwy - 1 Gb $3,925
Cloud Hwy - 2 Gb $7,850
Cloud Hwy - 3 Gb (AWS only) $11,775
Cloud Hwy - 4 Gb (AWS only) $15,700
Cloud Hwy - 5 Gb (Microsoft only) $19,625

 

Note: All pricing shown above is based on Monthly Recurring Cost (MRC).

What's included in the price?

The rates above recover the following WaTech expenses:

  • Connectivity from the State Data Center and Quincy Data Center to the Seattle Westin Building.
  • Network and security infrastructure to support the Cloud Highway.
  • WaTech's expertise, service and support.
  • To ensure that agency data packets are not dropped and to avoid negative impacts to other agencies due to saturation of shared links, an agency Cloud Highway service tier needs to align with a customer's total direct connect and/or MS ExpressRoute bandwidth capacity throughput; excluding backup and redundancy.
  • Equinix Cloud Aggregation services.
  • Cost sharing of the cross connects into the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) Fabric.
  • If encryption is required, WaTech cloud routing architecture is available to support IPSEC connectivity from an agency's cloud environment to WaTech's Cloud Highway infrastructure.

Cloud Highway Off-Ramps Fee for Service (FFS):

As described earlier, the Cloud Highway takes you from the State's network to the network edge of the cloud vendors. Next, the customer will establish the connectivity with the cloud vendor(s) (called Cloud Highway Off-Ramps). Cloud Highway "Off-Ramps" charges are billed directly to customers by WaTech.

For those customers requiring connectivity to Microsoft or any cloud service provider accessible through the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) Fabric, the following service options are available.

 

Cloud Virtual Circuit (VC) Capacity Tiers MRC NRC
50 Mb Cloud Virtual Circuit $110  
200 Mb Cloud Virtual Circuit $175  
500 Mb Cloud Virtual Circuit $300  
1 Gb Cloud Virtual Circuit $475  
Pair of 1 Gb Cloud Virtual Circuits $950  
10 Gb Cloud Virtual Circuit $2,750  
1 Gb Remote Fabric Virtual Circuit (from Seattle to Silicon Valley, SV) $1,210  
1 Gb Fabric Port (coupled w/ 1 Gb Remote Fabric Virtual Circuits to SV) $135  
One-Time Install (Setup) Fee (per virtual circuit)   $600
Disconnect Fee (per virtual circuit)   $600
One-Time Install (Setup) Fee (per remote virtual circuit)   $400

For those customers requiring dedicated connectivity directly to a cloud service provider not accessible through the Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX), the following connectivity option is available. Note: All pricing shown is billed directly by WaTech, and includes applicable cross connect fees: Monthly Recurring Cost (MRC) and Nonrecurring Cost (NRC).

 

Cloud Cross Connects
Ongoing Service Fee $460 Monthly recurring cost
One-Time Install (Setup) Fee $1,200 Nonrecurring cost

Note: All pricing shown is billed directly by WaTech; Monthly Recurring Cost (MRC) and Nonrecurring Cost (NRC).

What's NOT included in WaTech's Cloud Highway Service and Cloud Highway Off-Ramps pricing?

WaTech's Cloud Virtual Private Network (VPN) service can be used as a backup connectivity solution to the Cloud Highway using the Internet if customers require that level of redundancy.

WaTech's Cloud Highway service leverages the capabilities and features of the WaTech's Network Core and Managed Firewall Services.

The following costs (financial commitments) are the responsibility of each customer; they are billed directly to the customer from/by the appropriate cloud service provider, and are not the responsibility of (nor billed by) WaTech:

  • Microsoft ExpressRoutes.
  • Amazon Direct Connects.
  • Microsoft Azure subscriptions and Virtual Networks (VNETs).
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts (Virtual Private Cloud).
  • IaaS acquired from a cloud service provider or associated third party.
  • PaaS acquired from a cloud service provider or associated third party.
  • SaaS acquired from a cloud service provider or associated third party.
  • Ingress and egress fees in and out of any public cloud environment.
    • Please consult with your respective cloud service provider representatives to acquire their most up-to-date pricing on utilization.
  • Direct connectivity to other cloud vendors.

How to Order

Contact the WaTech Support Center to schedule an operational consultation.

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

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.

Required forms

  • Customers seeking to learn more about the features, capabilities, benefits, advantages, opportunities, and architecture of WaTech's Cloud Highway need to complete the Cloud Highway Consultation Request Form.
    A Cloud Highway Consultation is an informational engagement where customers can ask questions and gather detailed information about WaTech's Cloud Highway for planning purposes.

  • Customers that are ready to commit to WaTech's Cloud Highway service need to complete the Cloud Highway Consultation Request Form to initiate an Architectural & Design Consultation (as described above).

Terms of Service (TOS)

The customer must review and agree to the Cloud Highway Service (TOS); after accepting the terms, the Application form will appear, allowing the customer to complete the rest of the application and submit it to WaTech.

Reference Material

Microsoft References:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) References:

Equinix References:

The business-critical cloud-based capabilities that state agencies are currently taking advantage of include, but are not limited to:

Service Forms & Documents

Contact

WaTech Support Center
support@watech.wa.gov
855-928-3241
360-586-1000