How many Jira are there? What's the difference between them?

[Karmandroid Singularity]

Hi, 

I am curious on how many option of Jira available on the market. I often saw when there are question, someone will ask "what Jira do you use? cloud?".

In the Product page, Atlassian mentioned: 

• There are 2 type of Jira products: Jira and Jira Service Management
• There are 3 options of hosting: Cloud, Server, and Data Center

So, is it in total we have 6 Jira options? What are the difference?

Thank you

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Karmandroid Singularity 

That is not quite correct.

Atlassian is no longer selling licenses for Server. Those stopped being available in February 2024.

I am not going to provide an exhaustive list of the differences between Jira and JSM, between Cloud and Data Center. Here are some highlights.

Jira vs. JSM

- The target audience for Jira is product development teams and other teams that need to manage work, but specifically not directly supporting "help desk" type functionality. It provides project templates that server this type of work, with the addition of Scrum and Kanban boards and relevant Agile methodology reporting.

- The target audience for JSM is teams needing "help desk" functionality to support receiving requests from "customers" to whom they don't want to grant full access/licenses to the Jira/JSM product. The functionality is oriented towards serving a help desk, include a customer facing portal that is distinct from the interface the help desk agents use including Queue organization and SLA monitoring. It does not include functionality more geared towards product development, such as Scrum board support and burndown charts.

Cloud vs. Data Center

- Data Center is the "older" product. For this product the client must set up their own servers and databases and networking for hosting the product. That infrastructure can be physical or virtual, on-premise or in a Cloud provider like AWS. Updates to the software version are made only when the client's Jira Administrators implement those.

- Cloud is the "newer" software-as-a-service product. It is hosted by Atlassian on their own infrastructure and they handle software updates. Clients can access the product through the UI and through the Atlassian-provided REST API. Clients do not have direct access to the backend database of the servers on which the products are hosted. There are some significant functional differences with the Cloud product because of product evolution and architectural differences compared to Data Center.

Another variation is that with the Cloud hosted product you can choose between four subscription plans; Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. You can find information about how those offerings differ by looking at the Pricing pages for the products.

If you want to look into the differences more deeply I suggest you start by reviewing the product information available at https://atlassian.com

[Karmandroid Singularity]

As a Jira user (not the one maintain how it hosted, etc), how do I know if it's a Data Center or Cloud? Jira or JSM?

Currently this is what my Jira (or JSM, i dont know :) ):

..and access it through URL like this: https://jira.company.org/

What is it?

[Trudy Claspill]

When you see a version number at the bottom of the page like that, then you are using either Jira Server or Jira Data Center.

(Clients who purchased Jira Server at some point in the past have a perpetual license. The system will continue to operate, but since February 2024 new licenses and renewals of existing licenses can't be purchased. Refer to https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/journey-to-cloud)

Your Jira Administrator can provide the information to you about the license type and the products available in your instance.

They can determine if you have a Server or Data Center license by navigating to the Applications setting page. The License Type there will say "Commercial (Data Center)" for a Data Center license. I think it will say "Standard" for a Server license. That page will also list Jira Software and Jira Service Management as two separate products.

Your system may have both Jira Software and Jira Service Management. There is not enough information in your screen snippet to determine if it also has Jira Service Management.