Answering your questions on changes to server and Data Center

[Joachim Eggers]

Hi,

I agree with the majority of the replies here, that killing the server products seems to be an awful idea. In the first moment I thought it is my specific use case that lets me feel like this. However, the responses here are showin me, that I am not alone.

Is there any option that you can re-think your decision?

Are there any ideas how to give your customers more control over their data and where it is placed?

Is there any option to get a similar functionality at an about the same level of annual costs when the server products are going away?

Best regards,

Joachim

[Scion]

I have already sent some private messages and opened a support ticket but, due to the draconian nature of your cloud Acceptable Content Policy, and the fact that you retain the right to delete our content without notifying us, Atlassian as a company is preventing us from moving to cloud even if we wanted to (and we don't).

This change disrupts several years of our future growth plans and, unless things are done to address them and help cushion the losses from server investment we've paid, it feels like you are quite literally kicking us from your platform.

We would love to continue using Atlassian products, but it feels like you quite literally will not let us. You were one of the last bastions for professional self-hosted solutions, and you are giving that up.

[Scion]

Also, what happens if our company grows and we need to upgrade to the next level of license after the January date? Will we be forced to buy cloud?

Edit: I see, it ends in 2022 unless you own starter licenses.

[Alfa Product Team]

I have a question about Bitbucket's cloud offering...

At the moment, based on https://www.atlassian.com/software/bitbucket/pricing there's no option for annual subscription, and the only way we can pay is through a monthly credit card charge. That's a bit of a problem...

We need an offering to support billing by invoice monthly, or annual prepayments.

You do annual user tier based subscriptions for other cloud product lines... are there any plans to bring Bitbucket Cloud more into line e.g. so that we can buy subscriptions through Atlassian Partners? Or to put in place a consolidated billing infrastructure, so that we get one monthly invoice, with a breakdown of the details?

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello,

Annual subscriptions are currently not supported on Bitbucket Cloud. However, there is a note on this covered in the FAQ page "Bitbucket Licensing and Pricing" under the section "Can I pay annually?", for existing Anual account holders, noting:

Bitbucket Cloud is no longer available for Annual payments. Accounts currently on annual payment plans may remain on annual plans, however new Bitbucket accounts will renew monthly via Credit Card.

If you would like to talk to us directly about available options in your account directly, please contact our Customer Advocate Team.

Regards,
Earl

[Alfa Product Team]

I have a specific question about options for Bitbucket...

At the moment https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing indicates the only way that Bitbucket Cloud can be paid for is by monthly credit card billing.

This is a problem... we need to either have an option to pay monthly by invoice and bank transfer, or an option for annual subscriptions (through Atlassian Partners).

As things stand, this alone would mean that if we're looking at changing from self-hosting to third party cloud hosted git repos, then we will be shopping around for somewhere that has an enterprise level solution for billing enterprises...

The rest of the Atlassian Cloud ecosystem seems to come with options for user tier based annual subscriptions. Why the exception for Bitbucket Cloud? Is there any plan to change this? Or to have some sort of consolidated monthly billing process with a breakdown of what makes up that bill?

[Bridget]

@Alfa Product Team - thanks for the note. We are looking into ways to support annual subscriptions for Bitbucket Cloud and will let you know once information is available. You should receive more on this topic soon! 

[tedcowan]

Does this mean the end of free server licenses for classrooms?

From your website at https://www.atlassian.com/solutions/survey/classroom-license-request#:~:text=Atlassian%20Cloud%20is%20available%20for,at%2075%25%20off%20commercial%20prices.&text=For%20non%2Dclassroom%20use%2C%20academic,or%2050%25%20off%20commercial%20prices:

"Thank you for your interest in Atlassian Classroom Licensing!
Atlassian Cloud is available for use by collegiate and graduate students and teachers within a classroom setting at 75% off commercial prices.

Atlassian server software products and Atlassian-made Apps are free for use by collegiate and graduate students and teachers within a classroom setting."

[Stephan Munz]

These are awful news and it really questions Atlassians reliability as a software vendor to trust on.

We will never migrate to the Atlassian Cloud. Trying to force us will result in Atlassian to lose us and our customers. We always recommended and introduced Atlassian tools to our customers. Now we have to find a different software solution and try to migrate all data somehow. What a mess.

[Michael Woffenden]

AGREED

[Being Appalled]

I have multiple connections to Atlassian, and I'd like to give you some insight from each of my perspectives about what this news means to me.

(1) AS AN IT CONSULTANT AND AGILE COACH

I have been an advocate of Jira and Confluence for many years. I've proposed and supported the introduction of Jira and Confluence in large companies. All of these companies would never consider a cloud product because of regulatory rules, legal provisions, and/or internal standards. You're obviously forgetting that there are a lot of good reasons why companies opt not to use cloud services. 

In those companies, I would not have been able to convince anyone to try a cloud solution.

You might argue that you are still offering Data Center, but you've made your path clear: considering your marketing, and now drop of Server, and these extreme price increases for the Data Center solution, the trust is gone in that you will continue to support hosted solutions in the long run.

(2) AS A CUSTOMER

While we advise large companies, we ourselves are a small company with less than 10 people. For our hosted solution, the price increase is 1600%. And we're not sure that is the end. What stops you from increasing prices again and again?

The price policy reminds me of IBM's when, in the 1980s, they started to squeeze out their mainframe customers by continuously increasing prices, trying to disguise it through repeated changes of how the prices were calculated. The result was that their customers fled from that platform, investing a lot of money and manpower, just to migrate to more calculable platforms.

(3) AS AN APP DEVELOPER

We have developed apps for Jira and Confluence Server which provide functionality that our (and your) customers were missing. We have invested a lot of time and money in these apps. Unfortunately, it is not possible to provide these apps for Cloud because of the limitations there. Cloud apps depend much more on an integration option from you, Atlassian, because the environment is much more limited. But although we were asking for hooks to integrate our apps, that was never done (and probably never seriously considered).

We know that other app developers have the same impression, it's not only us.

So for us, the news means very bad news. We expect most of our customers to go away within the next 1-2 years. So it does not make sense for us to continue investing in app development. The Atlassian ecosphere will definitely become less diverse.

(4) AS A SHAREHOLDER

I became a shareholder of Atlassian not because of the unmatched product features or quality. Rather was I impressed by Atlassian's sophisticated licensing model. With the support of small installations, I saw that many Jira and Confluence advocates in large enterprises were actually users who had tried out Jira Server in a small environment (even at home!). Many consulting companies (like us) are small companies, and they were using the same products which they recommended their customers.

While it was totally clear that you would not make money from these small companies, I was impressed that this was actually an extremely intelligent way of marketing!

However, either I have overrated Atlassian's smartness, or this has been forgotten about in the last cost effectiveness reviews, and requested to be dumped by a financial controller who does not know about how this market works.

Your prices increases have caused Atlassian shares to rise significantly over the weekend. This seems like good news for shareholders. Maybe for the next 1-2 years, maybe 3-4, but I'm so convinced that these decisions are wrong in the longer perspective that I now have a pending sell order.

Please excuse me for not using my real name for this post.

[mkalioby]

Me too, I always thought $10 license is smart, use it when you get big we will take it back when you can't leave anymore and it happened with us, jumping from 10 users to 25, but they lost someone that was smart.

[Norbert]

I'm supporting some customers of different sizes, needs, requirements and configurations for the whole Toolchain. You're now revoking the right to decide how they wanna run their systems. Some of them have decided to run them w/o connecting to Internet because of their reasons. Also Cloud solution won't fit their needs regarding their requirements because limitation of the cloud solution. I'm still convinced of the possibilies of the Software, but unfortunately this is a complete turnaround away from customers ignoring their needs. 

[iWantMyServerBack]

If we should actually go down the road with Data Center and invest in an upgrade, how can you assure that DC will not be discontinued as well?

[wolfgang mexner]

I am fearing the same - therefore we will check now how to migrate and not to trust on atlassian any more.

[JoeSu]

It is a disaster. I can hardly believe it. How can you do this to your customers? Unfortunately, money ruins everyone.

[niraethhhh1]

so rightt

[Andreas Löhr]

I can not believe that you really do this. Worst idea ever. In general and specifically for us.

Early this year we switched to a small Jira and BitBucket Server license (50 seats each), just last week we introduced Confluence as well. A killer argument for us was the ability to host on-premise. We do not want our customer’s data to be absorbed by a cloud, neither do our customers! Can you belive that?

Also the financial side. No more Server edition, just Data Center. Of which the smallest plan is factor 9 too big for us. Even more, you will increase the price for Data Center by factor 2! Does the feature set or the quality double as well? As we want to stay on-premise you are forcing us to pay factor 7 more money for something that we will not use (450 seats) or that we just do not need (clustering etc.). Yes, as existing customers, we can still get Server licenses for some years „grace“ period, but what then. I really hope that you reconsider. Let your (small) customers decide where they want their stuff to be hosted. At least offer some „smaller“ licenses for Data Center.

[Ferguson]

Atlassian is forcing us to move to the cloud. 

For now, customers can move to Data Center if they don't want to move to the Cloud.

But by looking into the Atlassian trend, Atlassian will stop Data Center support as well in the future and ask customers to switch the cloud.

In Cloud, you can't add additional security. It means for security you are totally depends on the Atlassian. Which is the thing I really don't like.

Customer like me for which Security is very important will face a many problem. 

Cloud security is tight, but it’s not infallible. Cybercriminals can get into those files, whether by guessing security questions or bypassing passwords.

But the bigger risk with cloud storage is privacy. Even if data isn’t stolen or published, it can still be viewed.

[kk]

Data Center is just _the same_ code base as Server: You can tell from some bugs on atlassian.com, whose content is, that some Data Center feature was inadvertently available in Server.

So: If they now ditch Server, they can be expected to try to do the same with Data Center.

Maybe not "fully", because e.g. the German Army will not suddenly switch to a cloud solution, but by making Data Center available only for top-tier seat counts, effectively cutting off the current Data Center customer base and forcing those to "go Cloud, together" :(

In essence, I will not opt for Atlassian products anymore, as my trust in them was misplaced, and very much so.

[Hans Krone]

I speak for a company that's been using Atlassian products for years. While you obviously have put a lot of thought into this announcement (and the over all strategy), it is a huge disappointment, from a customers point of view, nonetheless. I'm afraid I have to agree with many others as they have voiced their concerns (to say the least), that this is very unfortunate.

If Atlassian actually follows through, we will migrate to different platforms from different vendors. After all, if Atlassian pulls the plug on local instances once, why trust them not to do it again in the future?

[Nuno Gomes]

Saturday's announcement was not expected. We have been a customer since a few years and we picked Server from the get go precisely because it offer a straightforward "in-premises" solution.

You have now pushed us to start a migration process and, as you are only too aware, this means reassessing the solutions from your competitors.

We're not interested in your Cloud solution and the Data Center pricing is unreasonable.

Also, reading your e-mail announcement, what comes across is worrying. It suggests Atlassian cannot afford to continue to develop the Server product and puts in question your long-term sustainability.

[Michael Woffenden]

Well said!

[Leonie]

Do not force us to the Cloud please. We are using Jira & Condluence because we can run it on our own Servers. Our Data must stay on our own Servers behind our Firewall.
Thanks!

[Asten]

I think time has come to launch an (open source) projet providing tools to migrate from Confluence/Jira/Bitbucket to alternatives...

[Morten Stensgaard]

@Bryan Mayo 

What does this actually mean in details?? - The published statement is really vague when it comes to the whole eco-system of server editions.

See this:

Leaves us back with questions?!

Will customers still be able to buy new licenses for Marketplace addons after february 2021?

And what about renewals of these addons - Will those renewal options still exist after february 2023, where renewals for your server producsts expire or will renewals for addons cease to exist at that time as well?

I know we will have customers that will be asking these kind of questions in the forthcoming days and weeks - Especially hence we are sending out partner-statements to all our customers on this "breaking news"

[Bridget]

Hey @Morten Stensgaard thanks for the questions. 

If you haven't already, check out the below resources as they address your questions. 

• https://www.atlassian.com/migration/key-offering-changes
• https://www.atlassian.com/migration/faqs#server

For quick reference, here's a relevant snippet from the above FAQs:

Will customers be able to buy new license for marketplace addons after Feb 2021?

After February 2, 2021 PT, server customers can no longer purchase or request a quote for any of the apps we are including with Data Center as part of these changes. For all other Marketplace apps, existing server customers will be able to continue purchasing apps until February 2, 2023 PT. Ongoing app renewals are expected to be prorated with an end date of February 2, 2024 PT to match your server products’ end of support date.

Hope this is helpful,

Bridget

[Steve Kipping]

I can't imagine your app vendors are particularly happy about this. Surely you should allow the Data Centre apps to be purchased for Server until Feb 2023 to allow them to earn as much revenue as possible.

[David Yu]

App vendors can still sell you a license I suspect, just not through the marketplace.

[MF]

Bad Decision. We have integrated a lot of automation Tasks out of JIRA SD.

For example: HR creates Onboarding ticket which gets a formal check of data. While transition to the next State a Webhook is called which creates the user and does some config tasks, like Group/Role setup, phone Number and so on.

After this whole automation step a Documentation about this job is automatically send to HR back.

A lot of this steps wont work in Future, as we are not willed to open the Firewall or replace internal Services to a more public Network Infrastructure Part.

[Gregory Gleinig]

We want nothing to do with the "Cloud" which is nothing more than someone elses servers.  I'm now forced to migrate off Jira/Bitbucket/Confluence/Crowd/Service Desk to other solutions which was unexpected.  

Goodbye Atlassian, was a great experiance with on-premise for over 10 years.

-G

[Erick van Rijk]

Seems my response seems to be deleted while editing as well? (is there a way to check mod activity)?

While I understand the move to cloud based services ($$$) and less support issues.
For a “minor” portion of your customers cloud services are simply not an option. It can be IP / lack of certification / regulations 21 CFR Part 11 or GDPR / company policy. Our Notified Body simply will not except external sources which we have no control over. Which puts our certification at risk.
Just the continuous upgrade path of cloud is a dealbreaker for the situation I am in. There is no way to check for data integrity of the contents. Filed a ticket for that but nobody was interested.
Datacenter at its current form is also a no-go for anyone under 500 users. Just the pricing will not pass management review. Leaving mid size business in the cold.

Any users that can work in the cloud probably already moved to it already. So either you are considering your remaining customers as dead wood that needs to be pruned for profits or someone is sleeping at the wheel.

At least I will have some time to look at alternatives. Sad to have to do this after using your products for over 8 years.

For a more detailed explanation: here

[Paul Jones]

I'll echo the sentiment of many here by saying that this is really sad news for our 50 user setup to hear. Obviously we've got three years, but if there is no climbdown for mid-sized customers, we'll be forced to go elsewhere.

The biggest issue is Bamboo. I think we'd be fine to clear Confluence and possibly even JIRA internally for a cloud move, but giving a cloud version of Bamboo access to our databases, application servers, all of our code and then having to shunt all of that data up and down all day just isn't going to fly. Why would we develop on-prem applications using on-prem databases with a cloud-based CI/CD tool?

So we'll look for alternatives. And with Bamboo moved there's little reason to keep using JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket and the rest. We support a lot of Open Source tools, and it's been a credit to Atlassian that we've been happy to pay for their software because of how good it has been. But we move and adapt, because that's technology. So we'll do it again, and move somewhere else.

And paying for data centre just to avoid moving? Not a chance. I'm surprised anyone below 100 users is even considering it considering how much extra that's going to cost. But then again, what a bind they've put you in...

[Olimpia Torres Barranco]

Me gustaría informar de mi disconformidad absoluta con este cambio. La organización en la que trabajo y desde la que hemos apostado por JIRA ha hecho una inversión muy fuerte en el mes de julio adquiriendo 2000 licencias.

Con el cambio nos sentimos decepcionados sin saber si nuestra estrategia  ha sido la correcta. 

¿Hay alguna posibilidad de marcha atrás?

 Al menos reflexionad y considerarlo.

Gracias!

[Antonio]

Estoy contigo completamente porque en nuestro caso, nos sentimos identificados con vuestro problema.

Somos una compañía que ha adquirido 2000 licencias de jira, confluence, y tenemos bamboo y bitbucket, por no decir los pluggins. Todo nuestro negocio se basa en el núcleo de la plataforma de Atlassian y llevamos usándola desde hace muchos años, porque francamente, es la mejor. Imagínese el daño que nos hace, esto nos ha venido como una losa, y no tenemos más remedio que pensar cómo vamos a abordarlo muy seriamente de cara a los años futuros. Actualmente consideramos un abuso de poder por parte de Atlassian este movimiento.

Atlassian no acostumbra a dar marcha atrás en sus decisiones, y sabe que tiene la sartén por el mango, de momento. Pero ha generado un sentimiento generalizado muy negativo y sin duda tendrá consecuencias para Atlassian de una forma u otra.

[Eric Tolliver]

What other Atlassian products are on the chopping block?  After finishing our move of 2,000 users to Jira Server we were just ramping up users on Confluence.  I cannot afford to get stuck with another 2x-3x price increase so I need to immediately put the brakes on our Confluence move. 

I am now in the position of having to explain to management why I selected Jira and Confluence for our division.  We started with the Jira cloud version and found that it cannot handle our disk space requirements, does not have all of the add-ons we need, is extremely slow, and the interface changes too often.  The server abandonment does not leave us any options.

[Bridget]

@Eric Tolliver - check out this post about what we're doing to support server admins with hesitations/limitations for cloud. On that page you can also apply to join a community group where you can connect with team members and discuss how we can address your needs in the coming years before the end of server support. 

[Witold Dziel]

This was out of a sudden! Most of us I believe were not expecting this and most of us are still shocked! This is bad, bad idea...This will probably kill Atlassian tools in many, many companies. Most of them won't afford DC and others won't go to Cloud as these are totally different systems and you can't just replace JIRA server with a Cloud version just like that. 

Maybe it's time to check competitors systems?

[toniq-dave]

Can you confirm the plan for Bamboo Server? Bitbucket Pipelines isn't suitable for some of our legacy builds (such as Delphi XE), currently using Bamboo Server for this. As a small (10 devs) team, what is the recommended path moving forwards?

[Maggie]

@toniq-dave - Thanks for the question! We are planning to introduce Bamboo Data Center in the coming future. Until then, we will still continue to offer Bamboo Server so you can continue to use Bamboo as you do today. We will be sharing more information about the introduction of Bamboo Data Center as it becomes available. Please let us know if you have any other questions! 

Maggie

[Preethi Pandian]

If Bamboo server will continue to be in use until Bamboo Data Center is released, what happens to Bamboo server apps on Atlassian Marketplace. I read on our your site that, you won't be accepting any new server apps after May 1st 2021. does that apply to Bamboo server apps too. 

And if the deadline only apply to new Bamboo server apps, the existing ones can release version upgrades ??

Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello  @Preethi Pandian ,

There will be a Data Center Apps program made available after Bamboo Data Center releases. 

Since the Bamboo Data Center release and the Bamboo Data Center Apps Program is planned for the future, nothing will be changing for Bamboo until after the release is made public and the current Bamboo apps and new app submission process will remain unchanged in the marketplace for now.

The current Roadmap for this release is Q3-Q4 2021 as covered in the Data Center Roadmap viewable here:

• https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/data-center?status=future&product=bamboo

Additional details can be seen and followed for updates in the following Feature Request and FAQ page:
- https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BAM-18687
- https://www.atlassian.com/migration/faqs#server

Noting the following from the FAQ page:

When will Bamboo Data Center be available?

We plan to make Bamboo Data Center available in the near future. As details emerge, we will notify current Bamboo Server customers and continually update this FAQ. In the meantime, you can remain on Bamboo Server, wait to upgrade to Bamboo Data Center or migrate to Bitbucket Pipelines. If you need an on-premise CI/CD tool, Bamboo Data Center will integrate with both Bitbucket Data Center and Bitbucket Cloud. For details on how to connect Bamboo to Bitbucket Cloud, visit our documentation. If you want to make the switch to a cloud-based CI/CD tool, Bitbucket Pipelines is Bitbucket Cloud’s native CI/CD tool. For details on how to get started with Bitbucket Pipelines, visit our documentation.

Regards,
Earl