A Practical Gap in Cloud Migrations: What Happens to Critical Marketplace Apps?

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Most Atlassian partners agree on one thing: Cloud migrations are no longer optional. But there’s a recurring gap we keep seeing during migration conversations, especially in mid to large sized Jira and Confluence instances.

The gap is not data. It’s Marketplace apps.

While Atlassian provides solid tooling for product migration, the reality is that many customers rely heavily on Marketplace apps for core workflows. Reporting, test management, issue linking, compliance, approvals, and asset tracking are often app-driven. Yet app readiness and post-migration usability are still treated as an afterthought.

This post is aimed at solution partners and app vendors who are running into the same friction.

The Partner Pain Point We Keep Hearing

From solution partners:

• “The migration is technically done, but the customer is unhappy because key apps behave differently in Cloud.”
  
  
• “We underestimated how many business processes were app-dependent.”
  
  
• “We needed app-level guidance earlier, not after go-live.”
  
  

From app vendors:

• “We get pulled into migrations too late.”
  
  
• “Customers expect feature parity where Cloud works differently.”
  
  
• “Partners want clarity on limitations, timelines, and alternatives.”
  
  

Everyone is doing their part. The problem is timing and coordination.

Where Collaboration Actually Helps (Not Theoretical, Very Practical)

We have seen better outcomes when solution partners and app vendors align before migration execution, specifically around:

App usage assessment
Not just “is the app available on Cloud,” but:

• Which features are business-critical?
  
  
• Which workflows depend on it?
  
  
• What will change post-migration?
  
  

Expectation setting with customers
Cloud is not Server. Pretending otherwise burns trust. Early, honest conversations reduce last-minute escalations.

Joint migration planning
Partners bring customer context. App vendors bring product realities. When these meet early, rework drops significantly.

A Simple Question for Partners

When you plan a Cloud migration today, do you have a clear answer to this?

“Which Marketplace apps, if changed or removed, would break this customer’s daily work?”

If that answer comes late, the migration already carries risk.

How We’re Approaching This at Optimizory

As an Atlassian Marketplace partner working closely with customers and other partners, we’ve started focusing more on app-centric migration readiness rather than treating apps as checkboxes.

That means:

• Early app dependency mapping
  
  
• Direct collaboration with other app vendors when needed
  
  
• Helping partners and customers make informed trade-offs, not promises that Cloud will magically behave the same
  
  

This approach has helped reduce post-migration friction and unpleasant surprises, which nobody enjoys, especially not the partner who “owns” the migration.

Opening the Discussion

We’re curious how other partners handle this today:

• Do you formally assess Marketplace app dependencies during Cloud migrations?
  
  
• At what stage do you involve app vendors?
  
  
• What’s the biggest app-related surprise you’ve faced post-migration?
  
  

If this resonates and you’re interested in comparing notes or collaborating on app-heavy migrations, we’re open to conversations with solution partners and app vendors alike.

Because migrations don’t fail on data. They fail on broken workflows.