On December 4, 2019 the Transportation Agency Board of Directors approved an agreement for services with Alvarez Technology Group to provide computer and network services as the Agency's information technology support consultant.  One of the services included in the contract was to migrate the Agency's on-premise server running Windows Small Business Server 2008 to an up-to-date Microsoft Azure cloud-based server.  Similar to other cloud-based services, the Azure subscription service is billed by Microsoft based on network utilization.  Alvarez passes those costs through to the Agency without markup, and Alvarez's maintenance and support costs are billed separately.

Since the Agency had yet to transition to the Azure service and the actual network utilization was not fully known, Alvarez Technology Group presented a budget that was included in the contract based on their estimate of what the Agency's usage of the service would be.  The estimated cost was $140 per month.  Since the transition has been completed, the Agency's actual usage has been higher, closer to $200 per month with a one-time monthly initialization rate of $335.  The draft amendment would increase the budget for Azure to cover the net increase in costs and leave the remainder of the terms unchanged.