Answering your questions on changes to server and Data Center

[napalm]

Our Jira users are authenticated against Active Directory and if we are to move to Cloud and keep this authentication method, we will have to adapt our infrastructure to support SAML which will certainly be costly, both in time and possibly added services (Azure, Onelogin, etc.)

With that said, will you drop the SSO tax (which is 40%+ of the base license) for clients migrating from Server to the Cloud, at least for the first couple of years?

[Stephen Reece]

This is a great question, and I have a hunch the answer is that they realize this and can't wait for us to pay them for SSO.

[Angélica Luz]

Hello, napalm and Stephen,

When it comes to Active Directory, in Cloud, we support the integration with Azure AD and other identity providers such as Okta, OneLogin, Google Cloud, Idaptive, AD FS, Auth0:

• Set up SAML single sign-on 

To use SAML, it will be necessary to subscribe to Atlassian Access, and this product is not included in the loyalty discounts. For more details about what is included, please check our FAQ:

• Cloud loyalty discounts 

Regarding Atlassian access price, you can refer to the following link that has a calculator and an FAQ:

• How much does Atlassian Access cost? 

Does Access support Active Directory? LDAP?

Yes! Atlassian Access supports LDAP and AD FS via a cloud identity provider to leverage both SAML SSO and SCIM user provisioning. All of Atlassian's supported identity providers offer connectors to your on-premise LDAP directory or AD server. Atlassian Access also directly supports SAML SSO with Active Directory using AD FS.

If you have any other questions regarding this matter, please, let us know.

Regards,
Angélica

[Stephen Reece]

"To use SAML, it will be necessary to subscribe to Atlassian Access, and this product is not included in the loyalty discounts."

And there it is. I'm not even angry; I'm just disappointed.

[Alex Janes]

@Angélica Luz Thank you for this answer. However, I would like to add my opinion...

Charging a premium for Single Sign On is insane to me. Good security should form the basis of ANY cloud product. You should not be charging to keep your systems secure.

To quote the website https://sso.tax/

I’m a vendor and this doesn’t reflect the value-add of our Enterprise tier!

That’s the point. Decouple your security features from your value-added services. They should be priced separately.

But it costs money to provide SAML support, so we can’t offer it for free!

While I’d like people to really consider it a bare minimum feature for business SaaS, I’m OK with it costing a little extra to cover maintenance costs. If your SSO support is a 10% price hike, you’re not on this list. But these percentage increases are not maintenance costs, they’re revenue generation because you know your customers have no good options.

If someone uses the full Atlassian suite, the pricing could be reasonable. But if you just use Jira Software Cloud Standard, it's a 42% price hike for each user!

That is not reasonable. You do not provide single sign on services to me, Azure AD does. If you were providing me single sign on services that could connect to non-Atlassian apps, via SAML or O-Auth, I can see a premium cost associated with that. But that is NOT what you are providing.

[Kristin Lyons]

What would be the best way to merge multiple Jira and Confluence instances going forward?

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi @Kristin Lyons,

If your end destination is Atlassian Cloud, then I would strongly recommend using the Jira Migration Assistant App and the Confluence Migration Assistant App.  These are free apps that install to your Server or Data Center instances and can really help to make it much easier to get the data you want out of those sites to merge into a single Cloud site.

If you final destination is Server / Data Center, then those apps won't be of much help here.  Instead there is a KB that explains the process to follow in Merge multiple instances of Jira server.  This process is much more complicated though to follow however.  Many users find it much easier to use a paid 3rd party server app such as Project Configurator or Configuration Manager  to help ease this migration of data between server sites.

Andy

[Kristin Lyons]

@Andy Heinzer  Ah I meant after Server licenses are no longer available, I still anticipate the merging of multiple Jira Cloud instances to occur. 

[UJ]

I read the email about 3 times because I just could not believe it. I introduced Confluence, Jira and Bitbucket in our small company, and have been able to get more and more employees interested. Soon we would have been upgrading our license for more users.

Cloud is not an option for us, this has been decided by the management as no sensitive information can be stored on the internet (so DropBox, OneDrive,... are blocked).
A DC license is simply not payable for us we don't see any solution for us. To my regret, we will probably have to switch to an alternative in the future :-(

[David Yu]

Moving over from Server to Data Center is not without risk. We'd lose our perpetual license, and will then be at the whim of Atlassian if you decide to no longer support Data Center in the future. Unlike Server, the software would simply stop working when it reaches the end of the license.

Is there any assurance you can give buyers that if you end DC support in the future, you'll at least convert licenses to perpetual so buyers would have time to consider all their options?

[Dalectric]

That's a great point and something I'd not considered. Thanks for bringing this one up.

[DJX]

This is not a fruitful discussion and I will be unsubscribing from it. Atlassian believes they know what is best for us and are solely interested in pulling as much money from our pockets as they can.

Even if they were to reverse their decision for now, it would be unwise to think that they would not do this exact same thing at some point in the future. This is the warning shot and any reasonable person should start planning their exit. It is clear that there will be no negotiations and promises cannot be trusted.

Atlassian's true colors have been shown; the bridge has been burned; time for everyone to decide what they are going to do and do it.

[Thomas Meiboeck]

Hi,

Reflecting on the many entries, my simple question remains: Why ?!

I have extrapolated the costs for the next 3 years and this resulted in some insights.
.) A 500 user license for on premise servers is cheaper than a data center license.
Ok, Data Center has more features, but most of them don't need them, otherwise we would have switched to Data Center.
.) The cloud solution is more expensive than the server product with the same licenses.
Yes, the products are not directly comparable due to the required cloud service, but we don't need them either otherwise we would have switched to the cloud.
We have the necessary storage and processor capacities, the backup and security sets. And the server installation in the LAN is much faster than the cloud solution.
.) With the money for the licenses and maintenance of the DataCenter version, with the products used around $ 90,000 / year (and rising), I could start my own project and have my own solution programmed.
Probably less, but we still don't use all of the features. That will of course never happen, because when I suggest that management throw that much money out of the window for ticketing and documentation, they play hangman with me.

And that will also be the reason why we have to look for an alternative product in the long term.
We are simply not a multi-thousand developer company that could exhaust a +500 user license. Maybe we were never the target group of your product, because we use ticketing very little for software development. However, I fear that you will lose some customers who are not your target group by restricting your product portfolio, and with that you will lose real money.

I understand of course that you have to force your cloud in the cloud hype, but I cannot understand the argument that continuing the server solution is too complex or too expensive. The maintenance contracts are not that cheap either.

I also understand that there are companies for whom the cloud is an ideal solution. Companies that are very mobile across the globe and do not want to afford a central data center, certainly benefit from cloud products.

However, you also have to recognize that not every company is part of the junk food generation and does not go along with every hype just because it is there.

Overall, I do not see an opportunity for many companies by restricting your portfolio, but rather a burden in a variety of ways.
Switching to other products, whether to Atlassian DataCenter, Cloud, or a competitor product, is an unplanned and costly risk.
The people who voted for Atlassian a longer or shorter period of time must now justify this to the management.
The people who work with Atlassian products must be introduced to other, new products.

Sorry I can't find better words, but I don't think you know or care about your customers' needs, nor that you thought your decision through to the end.

Best regards,
Thomas

[Dalectric]

Well said. I completely agree with this.

[Diego Bruno]

Atlassian ->> Atla$$ian ... and no longer cara about their Customers..

[Alex Janes]

@Diego Bruno Although I don't necessarily disagree with your statement, I'd appreciate if you could add something more productive than, "Atlassian ->> Atla$$ian ... and no longer cara about their Customers.." to the conversation. That way, Atlassian truly understands why it is we feel this needs to change.

[Diego Bruno]

@Alex Janes , I appreciate your suggestion as it is very respectful.

I'll keep it in mind from here on

[Thomas Meiboeck]

Another question,
If the on-premise server product is discontinued, some developers will no longer be needed.
Are these developers not interested in founding a spin off and continuing to support the product?

Just a question.

[Daniel Ebers]

They are still needed - for the data center product (on-premise). The logic behind the question is easy to be understood but the idea is not applicable.

[Thomas Meiboeck]

That was meant rather sarcastically ;-)

[Antonio]

For years Atlassian was increasing prices on the server products. It is not a good decision. It's like a punishment for use these product branches. It's a dirty movement with fatal consequences for some bussiness and employments. The reasons are very crystal, the investors ,the money, Atlassian only had to fidelizate the clients, creating mandatory needs for their bussiness management, and afterwards cut this product branch forcing this clients to change their platform if they want to keep using the same system. There is only two ways to follow here, continue using Atlassian under their insane conditions, or looking for alternatives quickly.

And what would be the consequences in a future? There is no way to really know it, but it is a fact that should be very difficult to support this expenses costs by the companies, therefore I think a lot of workers could suffer consequences on their jobs finally due the Atlassian decision. Maybe not today, but in a near future will be a fact.

I would like make a question for your consideration at this point. Why Atlassian?, why do you make that in this situation that we are living actually?. At the whole world workers are being fired or suffering by other worse issues, and the companies are decreasing their bussines incomings due the Covid circunstances. Considering this is a problem that affect currently and it's not a local problem, it's a problem that affect to the WHOLE WORLD. How is possible Atlassian have no shame or respect for the workers, and the situation?

I will finish said to you Atlassian, today is time of tend bridges between us, not cut legs and decreasing possibilities. That's only thing that you are going to get with your decision.

Thank you

[Ingo Mohr]

Why not make the server products open-source?

There are users / companies that cannot move to the cloud products due to data residency restrictions/decisions - not even with the Enterprise tier.

Those companies would probably look elsewhere for an alternative solution.

Since the server products are already there and have a wide acceptance, Atlassian could turn the server products into open-source products and pass them to the Open Source Community.

This would allow to update the server products beyond 2024.

Also, this could be an advantage for Atlassian because companies are maybe likely to also use cloud products in addition to their existing server products - when those cloud products fit. - compared to leaving Atlassian entirely.

[kk]

Because it is the same source code as for Data Center. Changing a Server instance to Data Center is done by replacing the license key, we were told by our Atlassian supplier.

[Steven F Behnke]

You screwed me with hipchat and now you've screwed me with server. My bread and butter is now gone. 

[Alex Janes]

Even with HipChat, I kind of understood why. Realtime communication services work alot better in the cloud. I was able to get over that, because it was one product that just made so much more sense in the cloud. And, I knew of open source alternatives that basically matched the functionality.

HipChat was not typically used to store sensitive data. Maybe to communicate about it, and occasionally transfer it, but not the main storage area. So, as long as I enforced linking in my organization, instead of actual file sharing, it was acceptable to move real time communications to the cloud.

But this isn't do-able. I can't store the actual data in the cloud. And I can't afford data center.

So, management and myself have decided to wait a year, and hopefully have either a non-profit option of datacenter, or move to another product. We already have decided what that product will be. But we are hoping Atlassian gets a bit smarter and makes on-premise cheaper for smaller customers.

[Michael Liebelt]

You leave us no choice but to start looking for alternatives. Which is really sad because we have established a really well working ecosystem with JIRA which is not only closely tied to Confluence but also to ARAS and Sage.

Cloud is simply not possible:

• We have critical customer data in JIRA & Confluence and our customers are in the automotive sector. We are explicitely forbidden to have any of this data outside of our network.
• Your cloud solution is not GDPR compliant, which is also quite a roadblock as we also have personal information in our JIRA tickets.
• Our JIRA instance is only available inside of our network, there is no external access possible at all, even if e.g. a bug is discovered that allows total access to the JIRA server.
  This is not possible by design in the cloud.
• If we would move into the cloud, we would have to open access from the internet to all other software that interfaces with JIRA for retaining the current functionality, creating a huge attack vector on our network.

Datacenter is far to expensive for our 200 users and we do not need the additional features it has.

This also affects a network of universities to whom I successfully recommended JIRA and which are now considering to stop all of this before a transition to a different software gets too costly.
You will definitely lose a lot of customers with this, even if the competition doesn't reach up to your levels.

[Alex Janes]

Earnings call transcript...

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/10/30/atlassian-corporation-plc-team-q1-2021-earnings-ca/

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. 

How does this make me think you are keeping data center around? This sounds like you know you have larger customers that will take longer to migrate, but still have it in your plans to drop Data Center.

And, how can you honestly believe that all of your customers will move, when you have so many customers here that have explained that they can't move to the cloud? (Unless what I'm actually reading is, if they can't go to the cloud once you drop DC, you'll drop those customers too...)

Atlassian, you really need to reconcile with your customers. You are lying to your investors when you say this in your call; when you have SO MANY CUSTOMERS telling you that, no, they can not and will not go to the cloud.

[Tom Shaffer]

(Unless what I'm actually reading is, if they can't go to the cloud once you drop DC, you'll drop those customers too...)

I mean, does it look like they're trying that hard to retain you and me as customers? For that matter, look at the majority of the posts here and on the "Champions" thread - how many legitimate, open questions are there and how often have we been told that we'd be followed up on only to hear crickets?

No respect for the customer.

I truly believe that what I quoted is exactly what they're looking forward to. 'If you don't join us at a premium price, you can beat it. We only want the really big fish now. All you medium-sized ones and below can either pay to be part of the club or get off our books.'

So they might be lying to their investors but I think they're lying to themselves here. They figure if they keep beating that same drum, we'll all become hypnotized to their marketing but it doesn't quite work that way with sysadmins and the like. Seeing right through it, with every single "Atlassian Team" post lately being hypocritical, ignorant, and tone deaf - and sparse.

[Henry Archer]

Will you have a cloud server based in Canada? There are FIPPA requirements our business has to meet, otherwise we cannot migrate to Atlassian cloud.

[Angélica Luz]

Hello @Henry Archer and welcome to Atlassian Community!

Thank you for your question. 

We have plans to expand the data residency in other locations, and Canada is one of them.

This is currently in our Roadmap and for more information, please check the link below:

• Data residency in additional locations

I added your feedback to the feature request below. Please vote and watch the feature to receive future updates from our PMs:

• Add Canada as a Region for Jira Cloud hosting

If there is anything else we can do to help, please let us know.

Regards,
Angélica

[ralish]

Disappointed is an understatement. We've made a significant investment in Atlassian products over the years across several companies, and that investment now needs to be reconsidered. My view is that any continued investment cannot be justified.

No matter how you pitch your cloud offerings, some companies are always going to want to retain full control over their data, which extends to ensuring data is stored on their own servers. In some cases that may be due to regulatory constraints, while in others it may simply be due to internal risk assessments.

That your Datacenter offering is remaining available, despite surely sharing a lot in common with your cloud and self-hosted offering, suggests this move is purely motivated by monetary considerations. At a base price of $15,000 USD/year, the Datacenter option is not viable for many smaller organisations.

Just as Google ultimately "outgrew" its famous Don't Be Evil mantra, this corporate decision would seem to mark the precise time Atlassian decided it had outgrown its Don't Fuck the Customer ethos. That's a shame, and also a reflection on the overall corporate strategy and principles now present at the business.

[Tom Shaffer]

Yeah, the trust is gone. I can't even come to believe that the Data Center offering will have a long lifespan due to the latest investor's call (or letter?) where Atlassian is treating it like a stepping stone for those who are taking their time to go to their Cloud. But Atlassian swears each and every one will move to their Cloud. Soon, Atlassian will be cloud-only - and those who trusted them throughout this whole debacle will be all surprised while the rest of us just shake our heads as the writing's very clearly on the wall.

2021 and beyond: "100% new customers cloud-based"

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Atlassian-Cloud-Migration/Re-Re-To-all-Atlassian-server-champions-we-want-to-he/qaq-p/1513041/comment-id/594#M594 (it's on page 6 of that letter, if you're wondering)

[Atlassian Community]

ระบบการทำงานของฉันขัดข้องต้องขอโทษชุมชน

[ralish]

Apparently my post from yesterday has been removed? Is Atlassian now censoring critical comments?

[Michael Liebelt]

No, it's still there.

[Stephen Sifers]

Hello Ralish,

Most likely your post was caught in our spam filter, once caught in the filter it requires a human to have it removed. Looks like it's since been restored and I'm able to see the post above.

You can check your posts to see if they've been flagged as spam within your profile, anything listed as "in moderation" is within our spam queue pending review.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

[mabelisle]

There is no way my organization will agree or be able to move to the cloud. We are tied with strict regulations regarding BES Critical Cyber Assets Information. You are definitely going to lose customers. It look like you are orienting your targeted market to small to medium size enterprise and abandoning the big businesses with intellectual propriety to protect.

It's not all information that can be stored in the cloud and bragging about security is the first step towards failure.

[iWantMyServerBack]

You are completely convinced that all relevant customers are moving to the cloud. The Data Center product only seems necessary to give your customers enough time to move.
If this is really the case, it should be no problem to make the server products available to the community and make them open source for this small customer group that could or want not go to the cloud. Is that an idea?

[Eric Girard]

We've been using the whole Atlassian ecosystem since 2009 (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, Service Desk).  We really enjoyed the flexibility to host within our infrastructure and integrate with our workflow.  

Switching to cloud would greatly increase our costs (we are a small team) that we cannot justify.  Our licenses are up to renewal in December, seems like this is the last year we do so and will have a year to evaluate and migrate to another solution. 

Feels like Atlassian is doing the same thing that Autodesk is doing with its customers : squeezing them for money while spinning it as an 'improvement'

On a personnal note, I use confluence at home (on-prem!!!!) for my personnal documentation : it is, no WAS cost effective for me.  I cannot justify the cost of the cloud for a personnal use

I registered this morning for a webinar for migration options to other solutions

I hate how Atlassian PR tries to spin complains and disappointed customers as a positive thing

[mabelisle]

@Bryan Mayo 

You should learn from Gitlab. Six years ago they saw a market in self-managed Git market and now they have 2/3 of it. Some organizations want to keep their data for themselves. Maybe you should think twice about removing your self-managed branch because if you leave room for competition, they will take it.

[Evgeny Gryaznov]

I hosted personal 10$ version of Jira and Confluence for years with couple of paid plugins for private usage and our small startup (5 members). I am Atlassian certified and know about permissions, so i can distinct my own data and startup data.

Today i tried to test migration to cloud (Free plan). And... SURPRISE! There is NO PERMISSIONS on Free Plan! Use PAY plan, said Atlassioan.

Ok. Let's calculate:

Server: 10$ + 10 + 20$ = 40$*20%tax ~ 50$/year - 5 users

PAID Cloud with permissions:  5*5 (month) * 2 (Jira=Confl) * 12 = 600$*20%tax  = 720$ + Plugins/year

Sorry, but it's INSANE price...

And there is no Russian in Cloud version (not problem for us, but...).

[kk]

We pondered the options for our 2000-user Server setup and found that Data Center is the "cheapest" of them at "only" 215% times our current yearly license costs. Cloud would weigh in at nearly 500%.

As I understood, that the transition from Server to Data Center more or less consists of

1. Dumping some useful, but not "Data Center approved" plugins
2. Replacing the Server license with the Data Center one

without any functional benefits that would in any way justify the price difference, my questions are:

Is there anything we missed or are we just facing the largest price increase in Atlassian history: Twice the cost for less functionality (due to the plugins we cannot use any longer) or five times on "Cloud" with dramatically less functionality?

[Metin Savignano]

Re 1: You should be able to use Server apps on Data Center if they do not have a Data Center version available yet. This might be subject to change in the future though. 

[kk]

@Metin SavignanoAccording to the marketplace one cannot even use the server plugin license code in a data center installation. But be that as it may: As Data Center is prone to go in the next years, except for top-tier seat counts maybe, we will most likely have to move on to other solutions anyway.

[Metin Savignano]

Quoting from the FAQ:

It will still be possible to install server apps in a Data Center environment [...] if a Data Center approved app is not yet available. However, you will see a warning that the app may not be suitable for a Data Center environment.

[kk]

@Metin SavignanoEven if so: DC costs double!

[Metin Savignano]

That's correct. I did not disagree with this or any other part of your post.

[Stephen Gentle]

I missed the email about these changes back in October, just noticed it today and what a shock!

It's really sad to hear, this will be the end of the road for us with Atlassian. Just when we were planning to move some of our licenses up a tier too!

As a Government contractor, there is no way our company can switch to Cloud for our source code hosting, issue management, or documentation (currently Jira, Bitbucket and Confluence) due to Government regulations on classification, ITAR, etc. so it's just not an option.

The datacentre tiers are inappropriate for us (we need around 25 or 50 users for the various products) and it sounds like we can have no confidence in even the medium-term availability of that so we probably wouldn't even bother migrating to that.

So we will have no choice but to look for other vendors that offer on-premises options. It's a shame, I've always really liked Jira and Bitbucket and championed it and convinced the company to switch over five or so years ago...

[Stan Kononov]

It's just the worst idea to kill Confluence server-based solution.
I guess, It's time to start developing new Confluence-like server solution.
(((

[Marcel Ringler]

Hello Atlassian

Sorry, I am late to this discussion.

We will move away from Atlassian software, unless you provide  competitive pricing for customers with a few users (say 1-50) of the data center option. And no, a price tag of 4'200 USD for Jira per year would be way too much.

Even if you do so: we cannot host it at public cloud providers. When the software cannot run in at least ONE standard Linux Distribution like Ubuntu 20, we are forced to move away. Having the license expire at the end of the support period is already a showstopper. Now you ask for more money and huge minimal subscription, driving the price to insane values.

A quick google on the web finds me a few options to choose from. I am not going to tell here what we will pick, but it will be not more expensive than Jira/Confluence Server, and it will be on premise, and we will be able to import and migrate everything in a day. We already did a test migration. It is only that we would like to stay with Jira for as long as possible, but how can we? I really would like to have an answer, but so far your "CEO Feedback for the Founders" was not helpful.

Best,

Peter