Izymes 2025 Wrap: The year we stopped selling “apps” and started packaging solutions

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If you’d asked us at the start of 2025 what our biggest shift would be, we probably would’ve said “a new launch” or “a new partner channel push.”

Instead, the real story of the year was a mindset change:

We stopped leading with individual app features, and started building partner-ready service bundles that sell outcomes.

That shift shaped almost everything we did this year: how we talked to Solution Partners, how we showed up at Team ’25 (Anaheim and Barcelona), how we ran our Compliance Alliance sessions, and how we’re thinking about the Atlassian platform as it accelerates into the AI era.

The big theme: from “apps” to service bundles

For years, Marketplace vendors (including us) have marketed like this:

• “Here’s an app that enforces pull request rules.”

• “Here’s another app that helps you find the right pull requests.”

But that’s not how Solution Partners sell.

Partners sell repeatable services:

• “We’ll tighten up your release process.”

• “We’ll reduce PR bottlenecks.”

• “We’ll help you pass audits with less chaos.”

So this year, we leaned hard into a new framing: Izymes apps as accelerators inside partner-led service offerings.

If you’ve read our post Turning Bitbucket Apps into Service Bundles: Our Approach for Atlassian Solution Partners, you’ll recognise the structure we’ve been refining:

• Outcome & story (what “good” looks like)

• Partner services (assessment → design → implementation → enablement)

• Our apps as accelerators (rulesets, templates, dashboards, guardrails)

It’s a simple change in packaging, but it removes a massive translation step for partners:

“How do I turn these tools into something I can pitch, price, and deliver?”

What we shipped: Advanced Status Labels (and why it matters)

We also launched Advanced Status Labels, expanding our footprint beyond Bitbucket into Confluence.

On the surface, that’s “just a new app.”

In the context of 2025’s bigger theme, it’s also part of the same story: helping teams make work visible, structured, and repeatable, whether that’s governance in Bitbucket or clarity on Confluence pages.

Team ’25 Anaheim: the “AI + system of work” year really arrived

Team ’25 in Anaheim felt like the moment Atlassian stopped talking about AI as an add-on… and started treating it as the foundation.

A few takeaways that stuck with us:

1) Rovo moved front-and-centre

Atlassian positioned Rovo as a core teammate across Jira/Confluence/JSM, not a side feature, and announced “Rovo for all” at Team ’25.

2) Collections became the new packaging language

Instead of a dozen disconnected products, Atlassian’s story leaned into bundled “Collections” (Teamwork, Strategy, etc.) as the way customers buy and adopt a system of work.

3) Partners are being pulled into a faster cadence

The signal was clear: Cloud innovation + AI capabilities are moving quickly, and partners who can package repeatable outcomes (not just implementations) are going to win more often.

For us, Anaheim reinforced that our service bundle direction wasn’t just “nice positioning”, it was aligned with where Atlassian is taking the ecosystem.

Team ’25 Europe Barcelona: Rovo “everywhere”, and the platform keeps bundling

Barcelona wasn’t a repeat, it was an escalation.

Atlassian doubled down on AI being embedded “across every surface,” and introduced new Collections that matter a lot for how customers will package buying decisions going forward, including the Software Collection and the Service Collection.

The headline feeling from Barcelona was:

• Rovo is becoming the intelligence layer

• Collections are becoming the commercial layer

• Partners need to become the outcomes layer

That maps perfectly to the bundle approach we’ve been building: partners lead the engagement, and our accelerators make it faster, safer, and more repeatable.

The Compliance Alliance workshops: what we kept hearing (and why we ran them twice)

One of the highlights of the year for us was running the Compliance Alliance workshops at both Team ’25 events, bringing together folks across the ecosystem (especially vendors) to talk seriously about compliance in the Atlassian space.

The consistent theme wasn’t “more features.”

It was:

• auditability without friction

• governance without grinding delivery to a halt

• traceability that doesn’t rely on tribal knowledge

Which… is basically the entire reason bundles like PR Governance & Compliance and Release Readiness & Traceability exist.

These sessions didn’t just validate the direction, they sharpened it.

The biggest market shift: Data Center end-of-life (with a critical Bitbucket exception)

This one shaped a lot of partner conversations in the second half of the year.

Atlassian has now set a formal end-of-life timeline for impacted Data Center products, including a wind-down starting March 30, 2026, and an end-of-life date of March 28, 2029 (when impacted Data Center products and their Marketplace apps become read-only).

But importantly for us (and for many of our customers): this does not apply to Bitbucket Data Center. Atlassian explicitly states that Bitbucket Data Center will not end of life, and that existing Bitbucket Data Centre customers will get access to a Bitbucket Hybrid License (DC + Cloud).

Because so much of what we do is Bitbucket-centric, that exception matters. It means:

• Bitbucket remains a serious long-term option for customers with sensitive source code requirements

• “Hybrid” becomes a real operating model, not a temporary bridge

• Partners will need offers that work across mixed environments, and can be delivered repeatably

Which (again) pushes the ecosystem toward packaged services, not one-off bespoke projects.

What this sets up for 2026

If 2025 was the year we changed the way we talk, 2026 is the year we keep turning that into partner momentum:

• more bundle enablement (templates, reference configs, delivery patterns)

• deeper partner collaboration on real opportunities

• clearer “sell the outcome” stories tied to Bitbucket governance, release readiness, and PR flow

• practical alignment with where Atlassian is heading: AI embedded everywhere, buying packaged as Collections, delivery won through repeatable services

If you’re a Solution Partner…

If you’re building (or refining) your Bitbucket / DevOps offerings and you want them to be easier to sell and safer to deliver:

• Download the Service Offering Deck
  Get the current version of our partner-facing deck with example bundles, positioning, and talking points you can adapt.

• Get in touch with us
  Have a client or use case in mind already? Reach out and tell us a bit about your situation, we’ll happily suggest where our accelerators fit (and where they don’t).

• Book a call to explore a joint offering
  If you’d like to go deeper, we can walk you through the bundles, discuss how they map to your existing services, and look at co-selling options for specific accounts.

Because the goal isn’t “install some apps.”

It’s to help you walk into accounts with something customers recognise, buy, and come back for:
a named, outcome-driven service, powered by accelerators that make it stick.

[__ Jimi Wikman]

Great article with a great summary Sean!

It looks like you are well-prepared for 2026!

[Jamie Esker _Appfire_]

I love this year in review and it was great meeting you in Anaheim! 

[Dzmitry Hryb _Mushroom Marketing_]

The partner-led presentation wraps services around apps really well.

Let me use it as a reference :)