To all Atlassian server champions - we want to hear from you

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Want to hear from me? Well, hear it loud and clear: We're out.

We are a tiny, tiny blip of a customer for you. Less than 10 users. There's no way I'm going to migrate us to Cloud or DC when all we're looking for is a simple documentation system, and by the way, one that we can secure ourselves on-premise without having to worry about someone else's "whoopsie" in a firewall config somewhere letting people access all of our technical notes.

Confluence was beginning to act as a gateway drug of sorts -- we were starting to look seriously at Jira, and already signed up for Statuspage. We've been Trello users for several years now. We love the products, but not enough to pay what you're asking. I feel that there's a lot of other organizations in a similar boat, and you're going to miss out on more business than you realize. Or, maybe the plan is just to jack prices up on the poor suckers who stay to the point where the lost customers won't matter.

Either way, we're done. I'm sorry, but that's just reality. You really screwed the pooch on this one.

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Sorry to hear this Dustin. It sounds like you've already made the decision but I hope you realize your current 10 user starter licenses will continue to work in perpetuity. Additionally, we offer our cloud products for up to 10 users for absolutely no cost whatsoever.

All I ask is you go try Confluence cloud. Go check out the new editor. We moved to Confluence cloud at Atlassian a couple of years back and the new editing experience is pretty incredible. If you try it and you think it sucks come post here and tell us why, or, I'm happy to broker a call directly with our product management team so you can tell them directly.

Granted, if we lost you forever, I'm sorry to hear that.

Like • Dave Meyer likes this

As a small startup cloud migration will not happen for us.

- due to project sizes 2gb of storage total won't meet our needs (talking about a lot of projects here)

- the first non-free plan is way too expensive compared to our previously used starter license

- we don't want our data in the cloud due to liability concerns with our clients

- we prefer on premises

So our way of migration will be gitlab somewhat in 2022, which is free

Thanks for all the happy years but good bye

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Christopher, I'm sorry to hear you go. Small startups are a perfect customer for our free cloud offerings.

What storage limits do you require?

What are the liability requirements you have for your customers?

@Cameron Deatsch

- we prefer on premises

This, this right here. This exact statement and your response sums up why this has been so frustrating for a lot of us. Respect us, respect that we've looked plenty into your cloud and have decided it's not for us. Stop telling us we're wrong, because we are not wrong.

Can you please hold your customers to a high enough regard and not question their judgement?

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An open letter to the founders - https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/An-Open-Letter-Atlassian-s-Forgotten-Middle-re-The/ba-p/1510036#M3448 - please make data center licensing more affordable.

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For our organization, we cannot use cloud. We have multiple small independent private networks. Most of these are for very small teams, each with their own instance. It's easy to spin up a VM and a dockerized Jira/Bitbucket/Confluence setup for small projects on each network.

If Atlassian takes this route, we will rip out all our Jira, Bitbucket, and Confluence. I have no idea what we'll replace it with, but Cloud is simply impossible, and Data Center is hilariously not the product we need.

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I'm curious how you manage your license then today? If you spin up an instance when needed do you also have multiple licenses that are unique or are these shared across instances?

Yes, we have a number of licenses. Instances tend to stay around a long time, but are independent. As projects wind down we remove old projects and use the same license/instance for new ones.

Asten, thanks for the feedback.

I see you work for a large enterprise organization. I assume Data Center doesn't work for you due to the federated deployment approach you have for teams where each team gets its own environment?

Our Cloud enterprise offering offers almost that exact approach you're looking for. Is the requirement to keep these systems on internal private networks due to security, apps, or something else?

If you do choose to go with another vendor would you be willing to have a call with me to discuss what direction you are going?

I do, but our organization is kind of independent and we don't use the enterprise versions of your tools. We can't.

Both customer requirements and security make anything but self-hosted impossible.

I have no idea what we'll go with. We've invested so much into our configuration, our workflow, and integration that this is going to have a tremendous impact on us above and beyond the licensing. We haven't even looked at other options in years as this was just perfect for us.

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I feel like this announcement was not well thought out. If instead, you had begun reaching out to server users and asking why they did not or could not move to the Cloud, and resolved answers to their questions first before sunsetting server products, then you would not have as many upset customers.

This feels like an announcement that should have happened next year, not this one.
You are asking customers to move from a mature and well-documented platform (server) to a brand new but still half-baked one (cloud).

Instead, it very much feels like you thought you knew better than the customer, and did not properly account for your unknown unknowns. Issues that you did not know you did not know.

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Scion,

Atlassian has offered Cloud products for over a decade and our current cloud platform has been around for 4 years. We have much detailed analysis of the various reasons customers have not chosen our cloud products (many are mentioned on this thread). The good news is we have eliminated many of these blockers over the last couple of years including improved app availability, performance and scale requirements, security and user management, and much more. When we compare what we have delivered along with our current roadmap (https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/cloud) we believe we can address every concern a customer might have well before the end of server maintenance in 2024.

If Atlassian is truly committed to helping every company move to the cloud, even with issues as I mentioned in my thread responding to "Being Appalled", I would gladly like to get on a Zoom call to discuss how you could take our company there.

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I appreciate my use-case is probably unique and I am very small fry, but I do want to voice my use-case, given I'd be willing to pay 20 times the amount I currently pay for a single-user, self-hosted Jira instance. $16/month consumer subscriptions are not unheard of, and it's something I'd be happy to pay for a self-hosted personal Jira.

I'm a developer that uses a single-user self-hosted Jira instance that is sometimes used offline (either hosted somewhere on the local network, or running on the machine I work on). This is super useful if travelling without network. Moving to the cloud does not work for me. I need it to be accessible and usable offline.

I use Jira for personal software projects, but also for project management (like tracking house renovations, gardening, etc.). Nothing I have found lets me link issues together like Jira does (Blocked By, etc.). In a large project like a house renovation, lots of things are dependent on another previous issue being done, and it's super helpful to get the bigger picture of project dependencies like this.

If anybody has suggestions for alternatives that use the "graph" like feature of linking issues together with constraints, please, I am completely open to any alternatives.

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Hi @bbrks ,

I suggest you have a look at Stagil Asset - Advanced links

As the name suggests, you will be able to use custom fields to establish advanced links between issues, define hierarchies, and display them on direction/network graphs.

Like • Daniel Fietta likes this

Hi @bbrks

Ping me and I will give you alternative on premise project software to try. They have even direct import of JIRA projects.... I will have tomorrow Zoom call with this company to discuss options and next steps...

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My team is small (relatively), we currently make use of several of the 50-user tier Atlassian server licenses. For various reasons, we cannot move our data the cloud. At least, not your cloud, so long as it isn't hosted entirely and redundantly within Canada. Further, supposing you put the effort in to create a cloud offering which was able to host our data within our country, it would still be a significant undertaking for us to switch to the cloud service as would have to perform a comprehensive security review of your systems.

Compared to your current offerings which allow us to drop your tools on to our secured servers, it is significantly less desirable for us to pursue a cloud offering.

This leaves us with two other alternatives, switch to your data center tools, or retrain the team to use a competitor. The latter is unfortunate, and why I'm posting at all - retraining is not cheap, nor an efficient use of our time. The first is prohibitively expensive for a small team of our size. To switch from our 50 user licenses to 500 user DC licenses would cost us 3 times as much as we currently pay, for little to no perceived benefit.

Please consider our situation as you proceed with your changes. A possible solution, which would allow you to reduce the number of tools you maintain while still retaining the business of teams around my size who cannot or do not want to switch to the cloud would be to offer more lower-user tiers for your data center licenses.

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Warren, if we could guarantee data residency in Canada, would our cloud be something you'd consider?

I know there is effort in migration and retraining of your users but it still would be easier than going to an alternative vendor. We have migration tooling and training materials in place and you can use our cloud for free as you attempt the migration.

We detail all of this here: https://www.atlassian.com/migration/cloud

Hello Cameron,

While the ability to guarantee data residency in Canada would be a start for teams in similar situations to mine, even if you were able to do so I don't believe that my team would make the switch to the Atlassian cloud tools for the following reasons:

Bamboo: There is no cloud version (and even if there was there's no way we would be able to get the necessary ports/firewalls opened up to allow outside tools to push artifacts into our ecosystem). I have read from other comments in this thread that there is a DC version of it planned, but frankly if we have to host a server to run bamboo I would see little reason to pay hosting fees to run our other tools in the cloud. I expect that many other teams which leverage bamboo will have similar feelings/face similar obstructions when deciding whether or not to consider the cloud.
Similar to pretty much every other governmental organization, we have a duty to safeguard the data which we work with; we take this duty very seriously. While I'm aware that Atlassian is no slouch when it comes to security, the safest way for us to protect our data is to keep it behind our firewalls. That way, at least, there are fewer points of failure.
This is similar to the above point, but the fact that Atlassian employees have access to client data at all (even if it's on a 'need to access' basis) pretty much disqualifies any possibility for us to use the Atlassian cloud.

Thank you for the response, while I am disappointed with the direction that Atlassian is taking, it is nice to see the level of engagement with the community.

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@Cameron Deatsch In considering future solutions for data residency, would Atlassian also guarantee data residency in Canada (Europe, Brazil, etc) on behalf of 3rd party Cloud apps that customers want installed? How would this work?

Many Atlassian server customers—in considering a move to Atlassian's Cloud—don't initially realize that not only are the feature sets diminished in Cloud apps vs. server apps due to Atlassian framework limitations, but each 3rd party Cloud app actually runs on that vendor's own hardware (typically AWS, Azure, Google)—entirely separate from, and outside of, the Atlassian Cloud.

Cloud customers not only need to rely upon Atlassian trust (and any data residency offered in high-priced, specialty service tiers) but need to separately vet and trust the security model, architecture and business stability of every Cloud app vendor that transmits data to, or stores customer data on, that vendor's own servers.

Is the new Forge Cloud app framework supposed to solve this 3rd party data storage issue? If not, what's Atlassian's roadmap for addressing issues of data residency and related security and privacy compliance for the 3rd party apps customers want installed on Cloud?

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Thanks for posting this, it highlights the complexity around where cloud data lives. Really good to know.

Like • Dalectric likes this

Following up on the above;

We understand that this is a big decision, and you’ll need time to evaluate your options. Even with these changes we just announced, you can still continue to use server for the next three years and you have plenty of time to explore your options for the long-term.

I’ll try to touch on all of your points below:

Data residency

We have prioritized two key areas for offering advanced data residency controls. First, we plan to expand coverage for in-scope product data to new geographic locations. We’re currently evaluating Australia, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, and India. Secondly, we plan to work with top Marketplace Partners to support data residency for their app data.

Can you help us understand the source of your data residency requirements in Canada? For example, PIPEDA does not have a data residency requirement, but certain healthcare data and public sector data may have residency requirements under provincial laws. This will help us better understand the scope of your residency needs.

In addition to those, we’re also looking at options for supporting customers that require our Enterprise cloud plan (which offers data residency) on smaller tiers and plan to provide an update in the near future. If this applies to you, we’ve created a tracking ticket (CLOUD-11064) that you can follow for updates.

Bamboo

You are correct, we will offer Bamboo Data Center in the future with more details coming soon. Alternatively, if you’re able to move your CI/CD to cloud we’d encourage you to consider Bitbucket Pipelines – an integrated CI/CD service, built into Bitbucket Cloud.

Security

As far as security and employee access to customer data, we've outlined our operational practices in our Cloud Security Statement and Privacy Policy. Additionally, we’ve invested heavily in security and compliance and will continue to do so to ensure our platform and practices meet your requirements. You can learn more about our overall approach to security in our Trust Center.

We understand this is a big change, though we’ve never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future. Additionally, we spent a lot of time ensuring that all of our customers have the time to make the decision that is right for them and that we accommodate their various needs over the next 3+ years. Thank you for taking the time to engage with us and share what you need to make cloud a viable option for your organization. If you have more feedback or questions, please contact us so we can help you find the best path forward.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

Like • Kensuke Karukomi （軽込健介） likes this

@Stephen Sifers the point about we have 3 years to make a decision leaves out the fact that we are financially penalised the later we make this decsion as the loyalty discounts start to disappear after Feb 2021. This puts huge pressure on us to make a decision before Feb 2021 which is very unreasonable.

Like • Tobias Ravenstein likes this

Dear @Cameron Deatsch ,

I have been an Atlassian server champion in my company for the last 11 years. I have introduced Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket to many teams in the company. For the first time, I'm not sure if I can recommend Atlassian products to my colleagues and to my management anymore.

While the data center license might be an option for our large 2000 user instance (have to check the pricing), we also have a couple of smaller instances (25 - 100 user) that reside in separate, strongly restricted network segments for security reasons.

What we need from your (Atlassian) side is a strong statement that the data center option is not just a compromise in your strategie as it seems to be now. We also need an affordable on premise solution for smaller license tiers.

I am afraid that you do not have too much time to fix this. The discussions regarding alternatives have already been started. Btw. a cloud based solution will never be an option for us.

Regards

Michael

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Hi Michael,

Thanks for your involvement in the Atlassian community. We are continuing to invest in Data Center specifically for larger enterprise clients. You can see the Data Center roadmap here:

https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/data-center

You are not alone in your request for lower Data Center tiers. We can't commit to that now but are currently gathering data in this area.

Specifically, why will your company never use Cloud? Does your company use no SAAS software from other vendors?

I realize you may look to alternative vendors. If you do choose to go with a different vendor, would you be willing to have a discussion via Zoom so we can understand why you went that direction?

Hi Cameron,

Thanks for your answer; I understand that these are busy and unpleasant days for you and your team.

My company will never use cloud based solutions because of very strict security policies required by our customers. It's kinda funny that you suggest a Zoom session to discuss these things. The use of Zoom is strictly forbidden in the company and I'm not aware of any SAAS software that is used. It could only be the cases for scenarios where only public data is used.

We could have an E-Mail conversation though.

Regards

Michael

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Does your company use no SAAS software from other vendors?

@Cameron Deatsch You keep asking this question, but you are missing the point. We use Office 365. But, I don't store my critical patient data in the cloud, even if they are HIPAA compliant. The HIPAA compliancy from Microsoft lets me not worry about an email that might contain PHI. Not because I fully trust it and will now store all my patient data up there.

All of that is stored in on-premise databases. We created Jira workflows to handle this PHI, and the data CAN NOT AND SHOULD NOT EVER LEAVE our systems. Therefor, we will NEVER in the foreseeable future use Jira Cloud, even if HIPAA compliancy comes to fruition.

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@Cameron Deatsch

It's all basically been said. I've personally been arguing for true GDPR compliance and full data residency for years.

We love cloud, we can't go there if you take any data (users, logging really any data) out of our jurisdiction. This applies to most of everything in but especially public sector and health care in Germany.

Yes we use some other cloud products - ones that provide such certainty around data regionality and GDPR. I've been begging for official announcements about this in slack and to everyone from Atlassian who will listen.

People invested heavily, even after the price hikes last year. Now this? It is breaking trust and breaking a guiding principle of Atlassian to not f@rk the customer. Just be honest and swap that one with "cloud first" and you'll be okay.

The big question now really now is:

How long before Data Center ist also EOL? How long does Atlassian guarantee it will maintain and upgrade data centre (for those that can afford it)?

Goodnight and good luck everyone

Jack...

PS. I am in favour of cloud, I really am, iff it is legally ok for me to use it. Features are great but come much later in the list.of must haves.

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Jorg, thanks for your feedback. Data Residency continues to be a constant trend in customer feedback. I'm sure we will be able to achieve the requirements you have in these areas and will continue to push the product teams to deliver here.

As far as the long-term support for Data Center, we have no published timeline but we expect with this announcement we will see many customers move to Data Center and will continue to support them for many years.

The best validation I can give on our commitment to Data Center is our public roadmap for Data Center: https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/data-center

The question is when around data residency. I've heard you're working on it, but I haven't heard hard dates. If you know it is so important, then why not solve it before this move?

Unfortunately @Cameron Deatsch that probably won't cut it in terms of Data Center EOL.

At previous events, team tour etc, as recently as last year Atlassian stated publicly they were cloud first but keeping Server.

That statement/promise was broken. Data Center will be a huge investment for those that can even afford it, those companies have a right to know it's a five, ten or fifteen year horizon.

I would commend you to make the promise and back it up with full refunds if you don't keep it. As a public company, it seems only the money is talking these days.

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Ist unbelievable, how 18 years of building trust to customers are gone in 1 day......

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...

Like • Taylor Huston likes this

Many Atlassian server customers—in considering a move to Atlassian's Cloud—don't initially realize that not only are the feature sets often diminished in Cloud apps vs. server apps due to Atlassian framework limitations, but each 3rd party Cloud app actually runs on that vendor's own hardware (typically AWS, Azure, Google)—entirely separate from, and outside of, the Atlassian Cloud.

Cloud customers not only need to rely upon Atlassian trust—and any data residency offered in high-priced, specialty service tiers—but need to separately vet and trust the security model, architecture, business stability and data residency of every Cloud app vendor that transmits data to, or stores customer data on, that vendor's own servers.

Perhaps the new Forge Cloud app framework is supposed to solve this 3rd party data storage issue. If not, what's Atlassian's roadmap for addressing issues of data residency and related security and privacy compliance for the 3rd party apps customers want installed on Cloud?

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Hope this is a bad joke.

When will the Atlassian Cloud be TISAX certified?

Without that it is a No Go for us.

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Hi Patrick,

Even with these changes we just announced, you can still continue to use server for the next three years and you have plenty of time to explore your options for the long-term. If you are still unable to migrate to cloud by the end of the three-year support window, you can move to Data Center. Data Center will remain our self-managed enterprise solution that enables you to maintain control over their environment, helping you meet your unique security, compliance, and scale demands.

We’ve built a number of tools and resources to help you navigate this change so please check them out on our website.

We also have a tracking ticket (CLOUD-10934) that you can follow for updates on the availability of TISAX compliance in cloud, as well as our cloud roadmap.

This is incredibly tone deaf.

For customers with multiple networks in the 20-50 user range, data center is mind-bogglingly expensive. So, we are #$@!ed.

We can't see into the future nor have funding to buy new licenses for the next three years by February. So, we are #$@!ed.

I never, ever want to see Atlassian claim "Don't #$@! the customer" is part of their values again.

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@Andy Heinzer "Data Center will remain our self-managed enterprise solution that enables you to maintain control over their environment, helping you meet your unique security, compliance, and scale demands."

If you can afford it.

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@Andy Heinzer this ignores the fact that we are financially penalised if we don't upgrade from Server to Data Centre before Feb 21 and the longer we leave the upgrade the more expensive it is for us. And the price difference is not insignificant.

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It's interesting that "Dont F* the Customer" now needs to be interpreted. Part of the beauty of this value, is that on its face, it seems so self evident. But perspective matters, and now something so simple needs interpretation.

I've been wondering about this since the announcement. In a sense Atlassian isn't F*ing the customer. They have been open and transparent that cloud is the future for their company, they have said "things are changing" and "here are your options" oh and "here is a long runway to make your decisions and a bunch of free resources" to help you change however you end up deciding to change. When you consider it from Atlassian's perspective, with the inevitability of cloud, change is just coming and from their perspective they have gone out of their way to communicate and help customers transition.

From the customers perspective, Atlassian is forcing a change which has a cost. Think about just the amount of time people have spent talking about the change and posting on this forum. That has cost companies. Then if you go to cloud, there is planning and architect and migration costs plus new subscription costs. Or if you 'change' to datacenter - which is arguably the simplest solution to the announcement - a large # of customers will have a 4x+ increase in license costs for an operationally identical product. If you are one of these customers you are feeling INCREDIBLY F*ed.

So as a customer, and a community leader, it is such a feel bad. And if Atlassian was like any other faceless organization and didn't create so much high quality soft skill value driven messaging, I probably wouldn't care. But it feels like a betrayal of their values. I bought into their message and so now I feel physically sick and betrayed with this direction. Shame on me for listening, and caring so deeply and believing, and shame on Atlassian for forcing everyone in the ecosystem to now have to interpret one of their most simplest core values.

The solution is to provide a lower tier of DC. I wrote a open letter (link below) arguing for this. In the bigger sense Atlassian's reputation is at stake for all of us 'forgotten middle' customers. I would really like to get the letter to the founders so they can hear what making dc affordable means. If you have a means of sending it to them, directly or indirectly, and could help me out that would be much appreciated.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/An-Open-Letter-Atlassian-s-Forgotten-Middle-re-The/ba-p/1510036

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So as a customer, and a community leader, it is such a feel bad. And if Atlassian was like any other faceless organization and didn't create so much high quality soft skill value driven messaging, I probably wouldn't care. But it feels like a betrayal of their values.

This is a move I would expect from Oracle or SAP.

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The solution is to provide a lower tier of DC.

Well, it already exists: it's the "server" product. It was shot down two weeks ago.

Think about it. What is DC if not "server" with "enterprise" (high-availability) features put on top?

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Exactly....

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I was always a fan of working with Atlassian tools and happy to recommend it to peers in our industry.

We are a small enterprise (<100 users) working in a regulated environment (medical devices, FDA/CE) with strict requirements on validation of process tools before roll out to production and on data retention. Jira is a critical tool for our operations for more than 9 years. We made significant investments for setting up Jira and connecting it with other tools. We even started to develop own plugins for this purpose.

My current understanding of your move is that Atlassian forces us to look for alternatives, because:

Switching to Data Center would result in a ridiculous cost increase of approx. factor 5-6 without actually getting relevant new functionality. We might manage to address validation requirements, but we would have to pay the full price of an (for us anyways much oversized) license even during the 10 year data retention period starting when the last project using Jira/Confluence was finished.

Jira Cloud would not allows us to fullfil validation requirements due to the number, frequency and lead time for new version rolled out by Atlassian.

Besides, asking companies in regulated environments to evaluate, make a decision and move to a new deployment until Q1/2021 is also really ridiculous. This leaves me with a bad feeling if you now ask/force me to move to Jira Cloud which makes the company even more dependent on Atlassian.

I would really like to hear from Atlassian what they recommend small and medium enterprises in regulated environments like medical device development, aerospace, automotive, pharma,.. Do these companies not belong to your target group anymore?

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Hello Thorsten,

We remain committed to supporting our small and mid-sized customers. In fact, the overwhelming majority of our 150,000 cloud customers are small and mid-sized businesses like yours, many with compliance requirements we support or are working to address in cloud. From a compliance perspective, are there specific regulations that we should be aware of for your organization, or is it simply an internal policy that all data must be managed in house?

I also want to address your concern about timing and reassure you there’s no need to move to a new deployment immediately. We’re making server support available for three more years to give you time to review our roadmaps, understand our cloud products, and make the best decision for your organization based on your unique requirements. We will continue to strengthen our cloud products so that they meet your security or compliance requirements by the end of support in February 2024.

We’re also working on improved capabilities for sandbox and change management in our cloud products (testing and rolling out new features to your organization). It sounds like you have some specific requirements for that, which we’d love to learn more about.

Lastly, on your request for lower Data Center tiers, we’ve heard your feedback. At this time the entry point for Data Center is the 500 user license and we have no plans to add lower tiers. However, we will continue to capture input from our customers and partners in this area to make sure we have offerings that meet your needs. And to ease the transition to Data Center, we also offer existing server customers multi-year discounts on your subscription.

Respectfully,
Stephen SIfers

@Stephen Sifersdoes it not seem crazy that a 60 person company needs to buy a 500 user license? Just nuts.

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I agree.

There is no stretch of the imagination where we, nor any of our clients can afford this. A 500 user ANNUAL license is simply outside the realm of possibility for any of our use cases. And to do this during a pandemic is just,,, I dunno, it's disappointing to put it mildly.

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@Stephen Sifers Thanks for your reply. Regarding applicable regulations, Jira Server as it is today is good. We need to track for every action who, when, what and why. Our major concern with the cloud is the fact that we HAVE to validate all our workflows and tools BEFORE role out. That also means that we do not role out a version, if required for months, if there is a blocking defect. This statement is based on our experience with another product that pushes new versions as docker images to customers on a frequent basis. It is a constant PAIN. Workarounds are often quite a hassle and therefore not an option because they would often require that the formal standard operating procedures and work instructions in our audited ISO-13485 compliant quality management system need to be modified.

The way you are handling this issue does not motivate us much to put our company even more in your hands by moving to your cloud solution. If you say that Atlassian thinks a 500 seat license is appropriate for small and mid-sized businesses, it is more likely that we use the remaining time to say goodbye to Atlassian products than with spending time to bring an Atlassian Cloud to a level that we already have today with Atlassian Server.

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@Tuellethis is exactly what we think about: invest into Atlassian and then they let us down again or invest the same ¡considerable! amount of time into another solution.

Especially in the light of "agile" management deciding to stop one product with possible solutions needed in many different industries (residency, certification, certifiability, version control, data control...) just vaporware.

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@Tuelle

Seems like we are in the same business with medical regulations. Rapid upgrades are a big NO for anyone in a regulated industry. I tried to explain that our NB will never accept external control of critical data such as a QMS, but it appears that Atlassian does not (want to) understand the limitations of the cloud.

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Yes, we are also developing medical devices. Luckily there have appeared several attractive alternatives to Jira and Confluence since our decision to go with Atlassian.

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Mind sharing the candidates? I've have not found anything that has a nice integration like Jira/Confluence. Its either targeted a purely documentation or development.

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Hi @Cameron Deatsch

I always give objective feedback looking at positives however few things on this journey to Cloud still worries me and I cannot give opinion is this a good or bad..

I am part of Atlassian ecosystem for many years.. I saw many changes .. some good some bad... But definitively I know that gathering feedback about server real usage should be done far before announcing that you end selling it.. Based on this you few years back should decide about the roadmap and what is important, so that this could be a smooth and fair transition to everyone.

It was simple as starting a direct discussion with all of your server customers like that called "What if in next year you have to end using Server.. What you would do?" and you would get exactly the feedback that you can use to see if ecosystem is ready and simply drive it or postpone a little bit the decision to still prepare this and that.. or give people a early notice that you consider this when there is a chance so that we can start focus on details or not spend money in the last 2 years for customizing server instances with server apps and integrations to do it again..

Now in such sort time we have to give a recommendation to all of our customers based on emotions and without proper preparation usually see as a result higher cost in all options.. It was not quite good way of removing a offering that made us where we are now..

Anyway I am not a top article writer but I decided to put few more words from a perspective of a old Atlassian user that born without Clouds and had many journeys already..

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Atlassian-Cloud-Migration/Journey-to-Cloud-is-a-great-vision-but/ba-p/1510925

Grab a cup of coffee, read if you want.. if you agree it is fine put a like button, if not it is also fine.. That is all the point.. we all have different perspective we can like something or not and different way of handling things.. we have a choice and we should still have it until it is really ridiculous or non-logical. Together as a TEAM we can get to a solutions that would make everyone happy, but if we would be hit by more and more that kind of short notice announcements and quickly decide we cannot do much to make it smooth and we can some day lose motivation to even do it..

Anyway I still hope in a long perspective the decision that you make at Atlassian are good and of course personally as a loyal person you can count on my feedback and expertise on many things as usual, but definitively that need to work in both ways..

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@Cameron Deatsch and the Atlassian Team:

A lot of very experienced admins have now posted on this thread the reasons that we cannot move to Cloud: technical, legal, contractual, regulatory, integration, etc. A lot of us evaluated Cloud in the past and found it did not meet our unique business requirements. (My company migrated from Cloud just a few years ago after initially deploying there and finding we could not accomplish what we wanted to do in that environment.)

Your response so far has essentially been "Atlassian understands your business better than you understand your business!"

Frankly, this is insulting. We do understand Cloud, and we do understand the efforts Atlassian is undergoing to improve your offering there... and it is still not the right solution for us.

Give us some pricing tiers for DC that we can reasonably work with, or be honest and admit that "Cloud First" is a precursor to "Cloud Only", and that DC customers can similarly expect to have the rug pulled out from under them in a few years as well.

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Even Microsoft understands that on-premise software has its place. 75% of customers could probably use Office 365. But there are regulatory and policy requirements for their customers that can never be in the cloud. So, they still license Exchange server, SharePoint server, etc, all for on-premise use.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/exchange-news-and-announcements-microsoft-ignite-2020-edition/ba-p/1662224

Granted, the next version of Exchange server will be licensed on a subscription model, rather than perpetual. But it's still on-premise and 100% under the user's control.

The fact of the matter is, Atlassian, you cannot and will not convince all of your customers to go 100% cloud. If you think that, you are crazy! I've seen some investors compare you to Adobe. They state things like, the first year or two of subscription only, their stock value will slip. But it recovered and started doing better.

But the difference between you and Adobe is, Photoshop installs on my computer. The files I edit, are all stored on my computer, or my file server, not Adobe's cloud (Their cloud is an option, but we don't use it). With your change, there is NO OPTION for on-premise, other than to spend exorbitant amounts of money. At least with Adobe, it was subscription software I could install on my computer. And I could pay for only 1 user. You don't have that.

If you want to get rid of perpetual licenses, fine. I will always need to maintain my support for updates anyway.

But I simply cannot afford Data Center, and will not go to the cloud.

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Andrew and Alex,

We understand that this is a big decision and might have caught you by surprise. But we’re here to work with you and explain the rationale behind this decision. By sharpening our focus to our cloud and Data Center products, we can move faster and go further - something customers have long asked for.

As you know, we’ve never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future. It sounds like you’re well informed and have reviewed our cloud roadmap already to see our upcoming investments. We will continue to strengthen our cloud products so that they meet your security or compliance requirements by the end of support in February 2024. If you don’t see your requirement or need, please let us know. We’ll continue to evaluate our packaging and roadmap following this announcement to ensure that it meets the needs of our customers like yourself.

In addition to this cloud focus, we understand that not every customer will be ready to make the switch from our server products to our cloud products by 2024. And, some of you have requirements that might prevent you from ever operating in the cloud. We currently have no plans to discontinue Data Center. We will be investing in it for enterprise organizations and are expanding it to include Bamboo Data Center - see what’s on our Data Center roadmap for the future.

We’ve put deliberate focus into making sure that we have the right programs in place to ensure you are set up for success with this transition, including three years of support and maintenance for your server products and providing a variety of discounts to ease the financial impact of these changes - whether you choose cloud or Data Center.

Lastly, on your request for lower Data Center tiers, we’ve heard your feedback. At this time, the entry point for Data Center is the 500 user license, and we have no plans to add lower tiers. However, we will continue to capture input from our customers and partners in this area to make sure we have offerings that meet your needs. And to ease the transition to Data Center, we also offer existing server customers multi-year discounts on your subscription.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

I'm most concerned that the death of the Atlassian Server product seems to be the death of the on-prem nonprofit licensing program as well. I know that Atlassian wants to push to cloud, but many nonprofits will not be able to utilize the cloud for a variety of reasons, often related to their work. Their only option will be Datacenter, which has no nonprofit licensing and requires a 500 license minimum purchase and annual subscription.

We serve remote Alaska and have a WAN connection of about 4mbps with a low bandwidth cap. Cloud is 100 percent not an option for us given our current WAN options and intermittent connectivity. The discontinuation of Atlassian's on-prem nonprofit licensing program will be crippling for our on-prem environment and the services we provide to the community.

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@Kyle Hardin We are also in the same boat. We are a non-profit that handles medical data, and therefor we have HIPAA compliance requirements. Their cloud just isn't able to handle that right now.

The only thing keeping me going right now is that @Cameron Deatsch mentioned in another thread that they are going to be updating their community licensing plan. No details yet. But hopefully it just shifts the nonprofit program to datacenter?

Thank you Alex, I appreciate that additional perspective. I truly hope that Atlassian does the obvious thing and shifts the on-prem nonprofit program to Datacenter, but I honestly expect that they'll choose to remain bullish on Cloud and focus on wrapping up the compliance hurdles there instead, ignoring the connectivity issues plaguing more remote regions.

Is this thread locked or something? I spend time to write posts but it goes into the void...

edit: I guess not. So I wrote to different post and both are gone. (even in my own "posts" section). Anyone know what's going on?

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@Stephen SifersCould you check my post for spam as well, since I lost 2 posts. One in edit and one regular

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Hello Erick,

I checked your post history and I am not seeing anything within spam. I do see multiple posts from you since the 17th, and nothing is listed as spam currently. To check your posts, navigate to your avatar in the top right, and select View Profile (All of your activity will be listed there). If an item was marked as spam it will show "In Moderation" pending an Atlassian to take action.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

Hi @Stephen Sifers Thank you for checking.

I did check the my own posts section but didn't see anything there. I probably made my point by now, so lets leave it at that.

As Jira system admin for almost 14 years, I consider this decision quite bad for customers who can't migrate to Cloud and can't increase the bill for afford buy a Data Center license for the same number of active users .

I have admin a Jira Cloud instance for 5 years until 2019, and I really know that Jira Cloud is lack of a lot of server functionalities and IT teams lose the control about the system administration a lot . In Cloud Atlassian support dependency turns very high . And well.. Jira Cloud UI changes are very frecuent what makes crazy to the customers (vertical bar first, horizontal top bar later back (better) , changes in the issues view layout , buttons positions , missing functionality for jira admins in the System area etc etc ).

Now I am admin a Jira server instance again in another project.

We can't afford a Server to Cloud Jira migration due to at least the following reasons :

\- Several add-ons not available or available with less functionality in Cloud and more expensive or paid (free for server) .

\- Connection to internal LDAP directory (Sun Directory Server EE) is neccesary in our company and the expose of internal ldap to the internet is not allowed. Moreover if exposed would possible, the connection to ldap requires pay more for another extra Atlassian module in Cloud...

\- Limited Storage, at least the last year Cloud only offers only 250GB storage for all Jira site in standard, to be unlimited is neccesary a premium licence (more expensive) , our current storage is near 1T and growing.

\- No possibility to have a stage/dev environment in Cloud as a exact copy of production environment to make tests .

\- No access to server logs or database ( sometimes we need to execute queries in the Data Base tables for information that are not way to get with JQL in the application)

\- Integration with internal tools like Jenkins , Sonar , Github etc through webhooks, It is not possible in cloud as this tools in the company are not exposed to the internet.

\- Python scripts stored in the server able with a scripting plugin ( for workflows transition validations in some projects)

For confluence there are similar reasons..

For sure there will be a lot of more reasons for not to migrate to Cloud that people is telling you in all the answers , so force to companies that are currently using Jira/Confluence Server to buy a DataCenter license to keep working in a similar way is another really bad decision made by Atlassian again , it seems it is mainly for making more money and force to use your Cloud keeping the control (and data) of as many company Jira sites.

So having said that, after knowing about your intentions , in my current company they are starting to consider and think about searching other cheaper ON PREMISE tools for issue tracking and projects management aswell as another Documentation/wiki tool for a future migration process in the next 3 years, in case you keep the current way to close your on premise products.

I think this is the feeling we have a lot of local system admins and systems project leads in many companies but Atlassian seems doesn't care much about ours..

Please reconsider your decisition if you don't want to lose your reputation in so many companies using your products and lose many clients . Maybe you can offer more competitive and adjusted prices on Data Center licenses (currently they are really expensives) to keep using it even for a single server instances or something else to keep updating server back again .

Regards

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So whilst I understand the need to rationailse the product offering, and I guess many SMB that would use server now use cloud, this is a big issue I think for many SMB that existing in a regulated environment.

We are in no way big enough to be able to justify the cost to move to the DC version, we dont need any features above what server offers us, and we need to remain on-prem due to regulations so where do we go for Jira and Confluence.

I suspect that our only path would be a for Atlassian to offer a very cheap upgrade to Data Center, or we will move away quickly from Confluence to some other wiki option, and Jira close on its heels.

My ask for Atlassian is stand by the many orgs who have used server, and offer us a cheap move to DC, if you said you can move your existing seat to DC for 10% uplift or similar that would be a no brainer.

Otherwise for orgs like mine we will have no choice but to move away. It also seems a little "opportune" and slightly dare I say it profiteering to effectively force people to move, and then at the same time significantly increase prices for the one that people are most likely to move to. Feels unpleasant... Anyway just my view.

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We are a volunteer-driven non-profit organisation that is active in three countries with volunteers from around the world, and works remotely. We have benefited greatly from your Community License; using Confluence and Jira has enabled us to collaborate much more effectively to achieve our mission. While we would be happy to pay for such a useful product, we can't afford much and even the Community License discount for your cloud products is far beyond what we are able to pay.

I sincerely hope you will do something to help organisations like ours.

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This announcement has both saddened and angered me. If this isn't a great example of "#@!%ing the customer", I would hate to see what Atlassian thinks is.

I have been a champion of Atlassian in my company for the last 7 years. In my part of the business, we use Server versions of JIRA, Bitbucket and Confluence. On Monday we started the process of calculating whether a move to Data Center was even possible as, like many other customers, Cloud is not and never will be an option.

This will be a decision made not just on whether it is affordable or not, but after this announcement, whether Atlassian can be trusted enough, to move to Data Center. I believe that I can license my Server instances immediately with Data Center licenses without even having to reboot so I can see no justifiable reason for the end of the Server versions, unless it is a precursor to the end of the Data Center versions also.

Regards,

Atlassian Server Champion (retired)

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I'm in a very similar and uncomfortable position: I was responsible for bringing Jira Software in and for having the resources allocated to migrate all our data (very successfully, I should add).

As Atlassian would have it, I had to announce their decision to my colleagues. Like I mentioned elsewhere in this site, it did not go down very well and left me feeling royally screwed over.

Went from champion to loser in a nick of time.

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Went from champion to loser in a nick of time.

Exactly. I don't think a lot of us feel like champions any longer.

Wow, I bragged to everyone with what I was able to do with Confluence in our company and I've had a lot of colleagues ask how it was done and what the cost was. I guess I will soon be able to stick out my tongue and let them know that I'm part of an exclusive club now and they can't be a part of it any longer - at least, not without a steep entrance fee.

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Hi @Barry Millar,

Everyone at Atlassian takes our value "Don’t #@!% the customer" very seriously. This is a big change but we have never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future. Additionally, we spent a lot of time ensuring that all of our customers have the time to make the decision that is right for them. We’re here to work with you through these changes as partners.

We currently have no plans to discontinue Data Center. If you have requirements that prevent you from ever operating in the cloud, we recommend Data Center.

To help ease the financial impact, we offer a multi-year loyalty discount to existing server customers who migrate to Data Center. If you don’t require high availability, you can migrate to Data Center in a non-cluster environment, enabling you to immediately use enterprise features and capabilities that don’t require clustering.

Additionally, here are some of the ways we’re investing in Data Center:

New enterprise-grade features that help you comply with new security regulations, and enhance the ease and security of managing users in your Data Center products.
A bridge to the cloud with new capabilities that make using cloud and Data Center together easier.
New native functionality from Atlassian-built apps such as Advanced Roadmaps for Jira Software and Mindville Insight for Jira Service Desk.

See our Data Center roadmap to learn more.

@Andy Heinzer It looks like the link is about Cloud loyalty discounts
I didn’t find server to data center discount there

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Even with a discount the upgrade to Data Centre is a huge increase in cost for us, and the later we leave the decision to upgrade the more expensive it is. If we don't upgrade before Feb 21 then the upgrade costs increase.
How is 3 months enough time to make this decision, yet alone find any budget to pay for this when our financial year ends at the end of March?

I don't see how this price increase doesn't hurt your customers!

I'm sure 3 years ago you didn't have plans to discontinue the Server product, yet here we are.
From the July 2020 shareholder letter
https://s2.q4cdn.com/141359120/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/TEAM-Q4-2020-Shareholder-Letter.pdf
there is the following statement
"Starting in fiscal 2021, we will be laser-focused on bringing all Atlassian customers to the cloud over the coming years."
Plus the statement here
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3623014-atlassian-shares-climb-after-announcing-focus-on-cloud-ending-server-products
that Atlassian will be a cloud first company.
That doesn't inspire confidence that Data Centre is part of Atlassian's long term vision.

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@Andy Heinzer how can we trust that datacenter will stick around when you make those statements in your shareholder letters and public statements? The roadmap shows no new features coming to service desk. So, it's really hard to believe that data center isn't going anywhere either when you have no plan on what to bring to the product next.

I said it before, and I'll say it again. For a company that makes project planning software, it really seems like you didn't plan this out correctly. That, or, this is the plan. To sow confusion and begging for a lower price, where you eventually will back down, and offer lower tiers on DC at a price way higher than server ever was.

I don't see how it could be anything other than those two at this point. But both of those are good examples of f$%&ing the customer.

Prove me wrong.

EDIT:

This is a big change but we have never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future.

No, but you were very shy from telling us you would discontinue server, now weren't you? And how does this statement help me believe that data center is sticking around?

EDIT Again:

One of my friends who actually manages a Data Center instance, has told me he is now looking into new products, because the writing is on the wall for him. He doesn't trust that Atlassian will keep their promises of keeping Data Center alive. He can't go to the cloud, as he works in a regulated industry like me that Atlassian just doesn't support.

He is starting to move to another product now, because if he eventually is forced to the cloud, he would have to pick a new product anyway.

Even your high paying data center customers are shying away from you now because they don't trust you.

How does the Atlassian team not see a problem here?

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Interestingly, Andy made the following 2 comments yesterday:

"We currently have no plans to discontinue Data Center. If you have requirements that prevent you from ever operating in the cloud, we recommend Data Center."

...and...

"No matter where you are in your journey, we want to empower you with choices. If you anticipate a longer journey to cloud, we’ll continue to invest in Data Center and are offering multi-year loyalty discounts to existing server customers help ease the transition."

I too would be cautious about a move to Data Center... :(

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The latest shareholder letter doubles down on the message that are driven by getting more money by pushing customers to the cloud and see server users as a minority and a stagnant market.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/141359120/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/TEAM-Q1-2021-Shareholder-Letter.pdf

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Interesting letter.

"The cloud allows us to see how users engage with our products. We capture real-time
analytics that help us understand usage patterns and make improvements that delight
customers."

So: Atlassian is monitoring the use pattern of our cloud instances. Do we really want that?

"Today, roughly 85% of all customers enjoy these cloud benefits. Yet, approximately 75% of all paying users still use at least one on-premises deployment, creating a massive opportunity to bring them more value in the cloud."

Wow, so 75% of the paying customers are NOT (entirely) in the cloud. What a whole bunch of stupid companies this must be?

The most interesting part for me is the one which reported, what the customers actually *want* to get. Why? Because this section simply isn't there...

Dear Atlassian team: I need cooperation partners/service providers which work professionally, which deliver up-to-date technology and provide the functionality I need in the environment that fulfills my safety and privacy requirements.

What I don't need is a nanny, pushing me the way he/she thinks is good for me.

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@Andy Heinzer

Just from your response...

Don’t #@!% the customer #1

This is a big change but we have never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future

Eh? You weren't particularly forward about telling me about the future of Server when one of my Server licences was renewed at the start of October. Even though you were pretty much telling your shareholders all about it back in July.

Don’t #@!% the customer #2

Additionally, we spent a lot of time ensuring that all of our customers have the time to make the decision that is right for them.

Like most companies, our budgets are set (at most) yearly. So giving customers 3 months until February 2021 to snap up your offer is no offer at all and really not helpful.

We have been using Atlassian server products over many years and the integration we have used, customised and extended took a significant amount of time to develop and implement. If I had nothing else to do then 3 years would be fine to substitute Atlassian our 5 Server products, but hey, I have a day job too.

Don’t #@!% the customer #3

To help ease the financial impact, we offer a multi-year loyalty discount to existing server customers who migrate to Data Center.

It might be a discount on Data Center but stop selling this as a discount. This is still a significant price hike.

Don’t #@!% the customer #4

We currently have no plans to discontinue Data Center. If you have requirements that prevent you from ever operating in the cloud, we recommend Data Center.

Read your own web pages. It states "We recommend Data Center for those who have stricter requirements and can’t move to cloud just yet.". You hardly need to read between the lines to understand that that statement is a nail in the coffin for on-prem, Data Center or otherwise.

No matter what hoops you jump through with Cloud, we can not move to it.

Don’t #@!% the customer #5

If you don’t require high availability, you can migrate to Data Center in a non-cluster environment, enabling you to immediately use enterprise features and capabilities that don’t require clustering.

Stop patronising this forum. Do you think the majority of customers here stumbled upon their solution? I don't use or require Data Center features. So "migrating" to Data Center would mean using my Server instances in exactly the same way as before but pay for Data Center licenses. We all know that Data Center and Server share the same codebase so this "migration" would be solely a commercial one for us.

Don’t #@!% the customer #6

Additionally, here are some of the ways we’re investing in Data Center:

A bridge to the cloud with new capabilities that make using cloud and Data Center together easier.

Am I reading between the lines again or is this Atlassian laying the ground for enabling a fair percentage of Data Center customers to Cloud before ending Data Center?

Don’t #@!% the customer #7

Additionally, here are some of the ways we’re investing in Data Center:

New native functionality from Atlassian-built apps such as Advanced Roadmaps for Jira Software and Mindville Insight for Jira Service Desk.

Well I am pleased that you are investing in Data Center add-ons because if I was an add-on provider I might be thinking twice before investing in, or providing future support for, any on-prem add-ons. You might be able to decide on whether you invest in Data Center or not but you have no control over the add-on providers future investment. And this announcement won't help matters.

Don’t #@!% the customer #8

Everyone at Atlassian takes our value "Don’t #@!% the customer" very seriously.

After reading the above and the posts on this forum, which part do you take seriously? My irritation and anger is because I have been on this journey with Atlassian, growing and extending along the way. Championing the products to overcome attitudes, technical challenges, business processes etc. Now, like may others in this forum, I have to tuck my tail between my legs and tell my peers, superiors and *my* customers alike that, actually, I was wrong, and this is the proverbial garden path. In our discipline we have to deal with change all the time - it comes with the territory. But sadly, this is much more than that. You have pulled the rug from under our feet.

I have responded to this just to be clear that this is my personal professional opinion and not necessarily that of any company that I am associated with.

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I was thinking of a similar reply, but you've put it much better than I could @Bazzer . Totally agree.

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Almost worth deleting my own post and putting a +1 against this one.

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We like many here have been taken completely by surprise with this announcement. Being a small solutions provider, earlier this year we opted for a starter 10 user license for Jira and Confluence, as well as a 3 user for Service Desk and have been greatly using them. Up until this announcement the plan was to purchase a 25 user license for both Confluence and Jira in anticipation of hiring additional staff next year. However this will not occur until August or September 2021 (at the earliest) which is also when we hope to have the budget in place - and this is after Feb 2021 deadline.

I am trying to look at this objectively, but I have to say it's difficult since we feel rather slighted and so that being said here's our take on this:

Many of our clients are between 5 and 40 users and can not afford DC nor do they have the desire, ability, nor resources to move to the cloud.
Files : File repositories are in the hundreds of gigabytes with trade secrets which are not permitted in a cloud environment - just can't do it.
Contracts : We have contracts to keep data in-house on our servers. Actually one of the very reasons our clients choose us is because they do not trust nor want their data in a cloud environment.
Automation : We have a considerable amount of custom automation (including in the Postegres instances) which is just not feasible to move to the cloud.
Security and Stability : We and some of our clients have been burned by cloud providers both in functionality changes/removal (almost invariably cited as 're imagined' or 'improved'), security compromises in one form or another, price increases and so on. Security and stability of the environment are absolutely paramount and so hosting locally ensures these factors.
Resources: We are working at the very edge of our resources/time trying to meet multiple deadlines; there's just no time to even consider a migration for the foreseeable future (at least 2 years)

Options for Atlassian

We just don't have many ways forward here since moving to the cloud is a non-negotiable point. That being the premise, here are some potential avenues Atlassian can take to help us and by the same token demonstrate some good will:

Allow the continued purchase of 'server' licenses throughout the support period ending in 2024, or at the very least extend it to 31 Dec 2021.
Create a much lower DC tier such as 25 user Confluence and Jira, and keep the price the same as it is now for the server products.
If nothing else at least consider offering existing customers 1/2 price on server licenses which existing budgets may permit before Feb 2021. Perhaps this can manifest itself in the form of various product bundles such as a 25 user Confluence and Jira license bundled together for $3000 - just a thought.

I believe the above are all quite reasonable, will demonstrate good will, Atlassian has little to nothing to lose by enacting them (Atlassian should make more money here) and will afford more time for your 'server' customers to get their bearings rather than resulting in upsetting an important segment of your base. I understand that in this business things are constantly in flux and that it is quite challenging to forecast events more than 3 to 5 years, but what Atlassian is doing here by terminating new license purchases so quickly in Feb 2021, is at least in my opinion, wrong and borderline unethical and is leaving us in a real quandary trying to force a hand. I can firmly say we would never do this to our clients and is no way to treat a loyal customer base. Trust is important here.

The hard reality here is that if no solution/compromise can be reached, then we and a sizable portion of our clients will reluctantly be forced to explore other in-house alternatives (even if they are not as good a fit). Lastly I find the timing of this to be possibly one of the worst, as most everyone is struggling with this pandemic. I don't need to say that people are losing their jobs, their lives, businesses are going under and funding is drying up all over. This is,,, well,, it certainly doesn't look good. I grew up believing in integrity and doing the right thing, where a handshake was good enough and so I'm rather disappointed as I expected more.

Thanks for your time.

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And with your well-written, constructive, and informative post, you received silence in return.

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Please explain to all of your US DoD contractor customers how their small classified <50 user Atlassian stacks that CAN NEVER GO TO A CLOUD and currently cost less than 20K/year total are now going to have to be 500 user Data Center Stacks that cost 60K+ each?

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Precisely. Classified stuff will. not. go. cloud.

Like • Furiia likes this

Atlassian is committed to helping government teams get things done faster, easier, and with greater security. We get that this is really challenging news for you to hear right now, but we’re here to help you. Reach out to your local Atlassian or partner rep and enlist their help in planning a path forward. And, if you don’t know who that is; govsales@atlassian.com can connect you.

On your request for lower Data Center tiers, we’ve heard your feedback. At this time the entry point for Data Center is the 500 user license and we have no plans to add lower tiers. However, we will continue to capture input from our customers and partners in this area to make sure we have offerings that meet your needs. And to ease the transition to Data Center, we also offer existing server customers multi-year discounts on your subscription. Special pricing and purchasing options are also available to the United States Federal, State and Local government entities through Atlassian's Government Aggregator, Carahsoft.

We are also currently putting our cloud products through the FedRAMP compliance process, though we recognize that you may have additional requirements that prevent you from moving to cloud.

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So I have to literally dismantle a dozen systems now. Great. I'm sure my reputation will only be tarnished a little bit by personally recommending jira server for small classified use.

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Data residency is a huge issue. The cloud roadmap says you maybe might have a local location but won't have an answer until 2022. I think you need to answer that now so we can make decisions and plan.

I'm speaking for myself, not my organization (I'm replying from my personal, not corporate Atlassian account) but I feel hesitant about the DC option given that two months ago an Atlassian representative reached out to "discuss our Atlassian environment" and we were told there were no plans to cease updating or supporting the server product in the foreseeable future.

There is no way this wasn't in the works two months ago - I feel lied to. How can I trust any information about the roadmap/life expectancy for DC?

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You are right. There is Atlassian Shareholder letter from 30.July 2020

https://s2.q4cdn.com/141359120/files/doc_financials/2020/q4/TEAM-Q4-2020-Shareholder-Letter.pdf

In one table you can find this:. "2021 - 100% new customers
cloud-based"

It proves Atlassian lied to your company.....

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That letter is very revealing of their intentions

"Going cloud-first is our most important priority because our customers want to be in the cloud."

How have they judged that? There's no qualification for that statement apart from the 95% of new customers choosing the cloud, which I come onto later.

Earlier in the letter

" we still have a large on-premises installed base, comprising approximately 75% of paid users for Jira Software and Confluence."

So we're not a minority.

"Our customers know their future with Atlassian is in the cloud. 95% of new customers choose our cloud products. "

What are they including in that? The free cloud offerings? That's hardly comparable with Server or Data Centre users. The free cloud license seems to be supported by this statement later on

"widespread rollout of free delaying paid customer conversion"

This one's a peach:

"One of our core values is “Don’t #@!% the Customer,” and we will be sensitive to customers facing challenges due to COVID-19. Pricing will have a modest contribution to our growth in fiscal 2021, in contrast to prior years. We will also continue supporting customers by providing extended terms and concessions to the subset most in need. "

And yet they've gone and announced this fundamental change that will push up costs for server users!

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"we still have a large on-premises installed base, comprising approximately 75% of paid users for Jira Software and Confluence."

That's astounding me. How can Atlassian assume they're all better off on Cloud when they chose on-premise?

I really do not understand it then.

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Right, a LOT of us have SPECIFICALLY chosen Server. Some of the things are features that perhaps, eventually could be addressed via development work on Cloud.

Most of them aren't. Customer requirements, independent networks, integrations with other tools, security, etc. There is no technical solution that can be implemented on Cloud to overcome these requirements.

That is pretty much the definition of "#@!% the Customer".

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we still have a large on-premises installed base, comprising approximately 75% of paid users for Jira Software and Confluence.

Are you kidding me? 75% of your current customers are not in the cloud, and you are eliminating the cheaper non-cloud option?

Please Atlassian, explain how this isn't just a cash grab...

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Further on in the document:

•5,892 customers spending $50,000+, up 44% year-over-year.
•267 customers spending $500,000+, up 56% year-over-year.
•104 customers spending $1,000,000+, up 76% year-over-year.

Total revenue for Q4’20 was $430.5 million, up 29% year-over-year.

Revenue by line item in Q4’20:
•Subscription revenue was $257.5 million, up 42% year-over-year.
•Maintenance revenue was $122.8 million, up 16% year-over-year.
•Perpetual license revenue was $20.4 million, down 11% year-over-year.
•Other revenue was $29.8 million, up 19% year-over-year.

So they are seeing a drop of server sales (Perpetual Licence) due to cloud increase.
Looking at the total value Subscriptions take up 60% the income, while server sales takes up 4% (maintenance adds 29% to that) (pg 15)

In fiscal 2021, we expect to see the following trends:
•Perpetual license revenue (driven by new server sales and upgrades) will decline by approximately 50% year-over-year.
•Maintenance revenue (driven by server renewals) will be approximately flat year-over-year as we expect a smaller impact from price increases and a growing impact from server migrations.
•The decline in license and maintenance revenues will be more pronounced in 2H relative to 1H.

Perhaps I am a bit biased but they are expecting this drop of server customers and planned for it back in July 2020. I think we are beating a dead horse here.

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I don't disagree with you or them that on-premise installations of any and all software (not just Atlassian) are shrinking. And frankly, I agree with Atlassian on one point; the cloud version makes sense for most customers.

But I believe this entire thread has proven that there is value to the on-premise versions of their products, and there simply are plenty of indisputable reasons against the cloud for some customers and use cases.

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We understand your frustration, and hope you’ll keep in mind that this change won’t happen overnight. We’ll continue to offer maintenance and support for your server products through February 2, 2024 – more than three years – so you’re able to evaluate options at your own pace.

We currently have no plans to discontinue Data Center. No matter where you are in your journey, we want to empower you with choices. We will continue to build great products in our own cloud, or you can deploy Data Center on-premise or in public cloud providers like AWS or Azure. As you can see from our roadmap, we have a lot of exciting work planned for Data Center, with more coming as our roadmap evolves.

We’ve heard your and many other customers' feedback, and know data residency – currently offered with our cloud Enterprise plan – is a requirement for many of you to move to cloud. We don’t currently offer the Enterprise plan to customers with fewer than 1,000 cloud users, but we’re looking at options for supporting customers that require Enterprise on smaller tiers and plan to provide an update in the near future. If this applies to you, we’ve created a tracking ticket (CLOUD-11064) that you can follow for updates on the availability of Enterprise at lower user tiers. You can also keep an eye on our cloud roadmap to see what we have planned to improve our data residency capabilities, including data residency for additional locations, data residency for apps, and more.

Like • Brandon Barlow likes this

@Andy Heinzer Can you please clarify something for us please? I'm wanting to make sure my company makes the right decision here.

1. What your co-CEO Scott Farquhar said during the latest earnings call, namely:

...whether they're in a regulated industry or a European customer, and it's just a matter of when (they will migrate to the cloud). And so, our data center product is going to be critical in making sure those customers are supported over the time frame for migration. But we expect that all our customers will migrate to cloud over the medium term.

2. And in the Q4 2020 Shareholders letter where it was written:

FY21 and beyond - 100% new customers cloud-based

3. And what you wrote down:

We currently have no plans to discontinue Data Center

So is Data Center going cloud-only coming soon? That's what I'm gathering here based on what you're company is telling investors and what customer support is telling us here. Otherwise there are some very mixed signals being relayed here and only adds to the confusion of this mess.

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@Tom Shaffer good catch. And I am concerned as well as I am considering Data Center as an intermediate step. My problem is HIPAA and HIPAA attestation for Cloud is in 2023 product published roadmap.

So if the statement full cloud after FY21 is true... Houston,.... I have a problem ;)

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@Tom Shaffer I hadn't even considered it that way. Very good catch indeed.

@Andy Heinzer Definitely want a follow up on this. Is it Atlassian's future intention to completely discontinue on-premise versions of Jira, Confluence, etc?

We really need a more clear answer on this.

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To complement what I wrote earlier (which now seems to have mysteriously disappeared into the abyss), I just noticed that the 'Data Center' license is an ANNUAL payment rather than perpetual license. This new realization makes it completely 100% out of reach for us for the foreseeable future. Given the current pricing of DC, once we grow beyond our current license count, we will need to seek alternatives.

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(I am re-posting our earlier post which seems to have disappeared)

We like many here have been taken completely by surprise with this announcement. Being a small solutions provider, earlier this year we opted for a starter 10 user license for Jira and Confluence, as well as a 3 user for Service Desk and have been greatly using them. Up until this announcement the plan was to purchase a 25 user license for both Confluence and Jira in anticipation of hiring additional staff next year. However this will not occur until August or September 2021 (at the earliest) which is also when we hope to have a new budget in place - note that this is after the Feb 2021 deadline.

I am trying to look at this objectively, but I have to say it's difficult since we feel rather slighted and so that being said here's our take:

Many of our clients are between 5 and 40 users and can not afford DC nor do they have the desire, ability, nor resources to move to the cloud.
Large file repository : File repositories are in the hundreds of gigabytes with trade secrets which are not permitted in a cloud environment - just can't do it.
Contracts : We have contracts to keep data in-house on our servers. Actually one of the very reasons our clients choose us is because they do not trust nor want their data in a cloud environment.
Automation : We have a considerable amount of custom automation (including in the Postegres instances) which is just not feasible to move to the cloud.
Security and Stability : We and some of our clients have been burned by cloud providers both in functionality changes/removal (almost invariably cited as 're imagined' or 'improved'), security compromises in one form or another, price increases and so on. Security and stability of the environment are absolutely paramount and so hosting locally ensures these factors.
Resources: We are working at the very edge of our resources/time trying to meet multiple deadlines; there's just no time to even consider a migration for the foreseeable future (at least 2 years)

Potential Options for Atlassian

We just don't have many ways forward since moving to the cloud is a non-negotiable point. That being the premise, here are some potential avenues Atlassian can take to help us and by the same token demonstrate some good will:

Allow the continued purchase of 'server' licenses throughout the support period ending in 2024, or at the very least give us at least a year and extend it to 31 Dec 2021.
Offer existing customers 1/2 price on new server licenses which existing budgets may permit before Feb 2021. For example we would like to upgrade to a 25 user Confluence and 25 user Jira license but can't afford both by Feb 2021. We need to do both or nothing. So perhaps this can manifest itself in the form of various product bundles such as a 25 user Confluence and Jira license bundled together for $3000 - just a thought.
Create a much lower DC tier and make it PERPETUAL such as 25 user Confluence and Jira, and keep the price the same as it is now for the server products .

I believe the above are all quite reasonable, will demonstrate good will, Atlassian has little to nothing to lose by enacting them (Atlassian should make more money here) and will afford more time for your 'server' customers to get their bearings rather than resulting in upsetting an important segment of your base. I understand that in this business things are constantly in flux and that it is quite challenging to forecast events more than 3 to 5 years, but what Atlassian is doing here by terminating new license purchases so quickly in Feb 2021, is at least in my opinion, wrong and borderline unethical and is leaving us in a real quandary with a feeling of trying to force a hand. I can firmly say we would never do this to our clients and is no way to treat a loyal customer base.

The hard reality here is that if no solution/compromise can be reached, then we and many of our clients will reluctantly be forced to explore other in-house alternatives (even if they are not as good a fit). Lastly I find the timing of this to be possibly one of the worst, as most everyone is struggling with this pandemic. I don't need to say that people are losing their jobs, their lives, businesses are going under and funding is drying up all over. This is,,, well,, it certainly doesn't look good. I grew up believing in integrity and doing the right thing, where a handshake was good enough and so I'm rather disappointed as I expected more.

Thanks.

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We understand that this is a big decision and might have caught you by surprise. But we’re here to work with you and explain the rationale behind this decision, as well as what we’re doing to support customers like you through the changes.

I want to make sure to address all your comments and feedback, so I’ll try to go through them point by point:

End of sale for new licenses: In cloud, we offer free plans that give you exactly what you need to hit the ground running and grow at your own pace. For customers on Server Starter licenses, these are a great option to consider moving to using our free cloud migration assistants and migration resources. I know you’ve expressed you aren’t interested in cloud, but do want to reiterate there’s a no cost option available to you. Cloud also offers monthly or annual billing cycles and per-user pricing, which make it easy for organizations like yours to flex up or down as your organization grows.
Large file sizes: In cloud, we offer unlimited storage with our Premium plans.
Keeping data in-house: Often, we see customers your size move because of the added security benefit that being in our cloud provides. Our Trust site is a great resource for understanding our security and compliance practices. Can you share with us what exactly your needs are that are preventing you from moving?
Automation: Can you share more about your needs, and why it’s not feasible to move to cloud? What types of customer automation have you built?
Security and stability: In a survey of recently migrated customers, conducted through Techvalidate, we found that 92% said that security is better or equal in Atlassian cloud, 96% said reliability is better, 82% said performance is better and 97% said innovation was better. I’d encourage you to take a look at some of the benefits of cloud, many of which might address your concerns.
Resources and timeline: We’re making server support available for three more years to give you time to review our roadmaps, understand our cloud products, and make the best decision for your organization based on your unique requirements.
COVID: We’re committed to helping our customers do their best work during these challenging times. We carefully considered the impact of this announcement during the pandemic, and have plans in place if you need further support - just get in touch. While we’ve long been working hard to make sure cloud is ready for the majority of our customers, we’ve seen COVID-19 accelerate the world’s transition to cloud products. According to our COVID-19 flash survey, 34% of enterprises are spending more on IT resources compared with just 3% that are spending less; 18% of organizations plan to ramp up their spending on external cloud/hosted IT infrastructure. As organizations reconsider their infrastructure strategy, and as teams begin to actively invest in the long term, we see more and more teams move, or plan to move, to the cloud.

Everyone at Atlassian takes our value "Don’t #@!% the customer" very seriously. This is a big change we know but we have never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future. Additionally, we spent a lot of time ensuring that all of our customers have the time to make the decision that is right for them.

While we may not have every answer for you today, 3+ years is a long time, both with the entire industry moving to cloud services and with our investments in these areas. We’ll continue working to address each of your needs to ensure you’re able to make the move as well.

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Can you, with a straight face, please tell me how I (a US Department of Defense contractor) can justify the price hike from 50 or 100 user on-prem stacks (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket) to 500 user Data Center licenses on FOUR different secure / CLASSIFIED networks ? My napkin math says my organization’s Atlassian bill goes from $30K / year to $500K / year. There is no way we aren’t already looking at competitors.

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I agree and similarly for our small company, going from 25 tier Server users to 500 tier users rather than 50 users! It would be next to impossible. Atlassian needs to come up with a better solution for Server users.

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Hello Brandon,

Atlassian is committed to helping government teams get things done faster, easier, and with greater security. We are also currently putting our cloud products through the FedRAMP compliance process, though we recognize that you may have additional requirements that prevent you from moving to cloud.

On your request for lower Data Center tiers, we’ve heard your feedback. At this time, the entry point for Data Center is the 500 user license, and we have no plans to add lower tiers. However, we will continue to capture input from our customers and partners in this area to make sure we have offerings that meet your needs. And to ease the transition to Data Center, we also offer existing server customers multi-year discounts on your subscription. Special pricing and purchasing options are also available to the United States Federal, State, and Local government entities through Atlassian's Government Aggregator, Carahsoft.

We get that this is really challenging news for you to hear right now, but we’re here to help you. Reach out to your local Atlassian or partner rep and enlist their help in planning a path forward. And, if you don’t know who that is; govsales@atlassian.com can connect you.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

@Stephen Sifers How about my suggestion to extend the deadline date for the purchase of new server licenses to 31 December 2021 rather than Feb 2021? In this way we will still be able to purchase additional client licenses and have some added flexibility in terms of time to work on a budget for next steps?

Surely this is quite a reasonable request and a show of good faith for all of us 'server champions', would you not agree?

If the answer is no, then please help me understand the challenges faced by Atlassian in honouring this request?

Thanks.

Like • Dalectric likes this

If Atlassian are truly listening to us then at the very least they need to push back the changes and price increases to the end of 2021 so all companies have time to plan and budget for moving to cloud/Data Centre. At the moment the Feb 2021 deadline is unreasonable and impractical for many of us.

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