End of server sale & support – February 2022 update
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8 June 2022: Thanks for your interest in how work is progressing on Atlassian Cloud Migration. There's a more recent update available End of server sale & support – June 2022 update, so this older article may no longer be actively monitored. |
Hello again – it’s time for another update…
As the Head of Enterprise product at Atlassian, I’ve committed to providing regular updates on the work in progress related to ending the support of server licenses and delivering a world-class cloud experience for our customers.
We continue to be focused on making sure we listen and respond to your feedback. It helps us find better ways to improve our Cloud offerings and support your journey to the cloud. So I wanted to take the time to share another update on some of the key themes we’re hearing and what we’re working on to address them.
Security, data management and compliance
"Data residency offered does not meet the Government of Canada's policies and requirements. The data needs to be stored on servers located in Canada."
Every one of our customers should be able to implicitly trust our cloud products - and we’re committed to delivering on those foundational capabilities. This includes an industry-leading security posture, tools to confidently manage your data, and certifications for the regulatory requirements in your industry and geography.
In our public roadmap, we’ve set a high bar for what we plan to achieve in those areas. To date, we’ve reached some new significant milestones and updated several of our plans.
Security
We recently launched a new mobile security feature for your Jira and Confluence cloud apps! As an Atlassian cloud admin, you can now enforce mobile app management (MAM) policies to both company-managed devices and bring-your-own-devices (BYOD).
MAM security controls include:
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Screenshot disabling (Android only)
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Clipboard management
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Data export restriction
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FaceID/TouchID/biometric enforcement
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Minimum OS version
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Device encryption
Customers also have the option to push pre-defined security configurations to mobile apps on company-managed devices through mobile device management (MDM).
In order to help our customers review who is accessing their sensitive data, enable their security investigations, and meet their compliance needs, we shipped user activity logs. They're a new category of audit log event types that track user actions inside of Jira and Confluence. We plan to continue investing in our audit logging capabilities that will include future coverage of more event types, additional products, and more.
Many customers tell us how important it is for them to have control over how their data is encrypted, particularly with the ability to manage their own encryption keys (known as “bring-your-own-key” or BYOK). Towards the end of this year, we plan to begin a Jira Cloud BYOK Early Access Program, followed in 2023 by the full release of BYOK for both Jira and Confluence Cloud. Read more about our BYOK program and join the EAP here.
Last, but not least, we heard your feedback loud and clear that your data is only as secure as the weakest link. We understand that our customers want to use Atlassian products to collaborate both within and outside their organizations. We're working on providing you the ability to verify the identity of your external users (contractors, vendors, partners, etc) through step-up OTP (One Time Passcode). This capability will be available later this year.
Data management
We believe in putting our customers in control of where their data is stored and what they can do with it, while still experiencing the full benefits of SaaS. We’ve just initiated an Early Access Program for a much faster Jira Cloud backup and restore service, and have released a beta for self-service cloud-to-cloud project migration between instances.
We’re pleased with the tremendous response to our expansion of data residency to all our paid customers and the launch of data residency support in Australia; and we're making great progress towards expanding data residency to the UK, Japan, and Canada in the first half of 2023. Many of our Marketplace partners already support data residency or are actively developing it, and we strongly encourage you to investigate your options on an app-by-app basis. Longer-term, we will make it even easier for 3rd party apps to provide data residency by implementing full Atlassian platform support – a milestone we have postponed to the second half of 2023. See all of our upcoming milestones here.
Compliance
In my last update, I shared that we had launched Financial Services Industry compliance guidance and contractual terms for our Enterprise plan customers. I’m pleased to share that we've now done the same for HIPAA compliance for Jira Software Cloud and Confluence Cloud.
Our next compliance focus areas are bringing HIPAA to Jira Service Management in 2022, and achieving an Authority to Operate under FedRAMP Moderate for Jira and Confluence in 2023. The underlying capabilities and architectural changes we’re deploying for FedRAMP Moderate will positively benefit many other aspects of the Atlassian Cloud experience and also accelerate our compliance with other regulations in the future. You can track the latest status of this major milestone on our public roadmap and explore our other certifications in our Compliance Resource Center.
The process of migrating
”Main barrier is finding the time to deal with these things. I need to get a test environment up so my developers can review. While I install and maintain, I don't use Bamboo and only minimally use Jira.”
In response to customers who told us they wanted more information on how to prepare for migration, we’ve improved the tools, resources, and support shared in the Migration Center.
Use the Migration assessment to inform when you can migrate to Cloud and access tailored resources to take the next step. You can also register for a Cloud Migration demo to learn more about migration best practices and watch Q&A with Atlassian Cloud Migration Managers.
Commercial and Academic customers with more than 25 users or agents, can schedule a migration consultation to discuss cloud features, pricing, differences between self-managed and cloud, migration strategy and more.
We’re committed to making our free migration tooling even better and easier to use. We’ve added Jira Service Management migration, Advanced Roadmaps migration and marketplace app migration to the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant and marketplace app migration to the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant and continue to invest in the Bitbucket Cloud Migration Assistant, which includes PR migration for the first time. For more information on what we’ve got planned, visit the cloud migration section of the Atlassian Cloud Roadmap.
Enterprise Server migrators, as well as Data Center customers embarking on a journey to Cloud, will soon be able to securely connect their on-premise products to Atlassian Cloud using Application Tunnels. Thanks to that they will be able to exchange data without exposing their internal network.
Apps and integrations
”Not all apps are cloud compatible. Migration of apps related data from data center to cloud."
Many customers tell us they rely on a mix of Marketplace apps and apps they develop in-house to extend the value they get from their Atlassian products. In response to their feedback, we continue to increase investment in closing any feature gaps and bringing more apps to Cloud.
Since our latest Cloud App Round-up, our developer community has added more than 150 new cloud apps to the Atlassian Marketplace. We're also supporting the migration of custom apps and the development of new cloud apps with our new developer platform, Forge.
Since our last update, a host of new Jira and Confluence apps were created during our Codegeist hackathon and listed on Marketplace. They include new custom field management tools, Confluence page linking and label tools, and new integrations with Medium, Stripe, and more. You can discover them here..
For in-house app development, Forge continues to add new extension points and capabilities for more robust apps and use cases. External Authentication is a new capability that makes it easier to build Forge apps that connect with platforms like Google, Slack, GitHub, and many more.
We're continuing to work with Marketplace Partners to bring even more automated app migration paths to you via the Jira and Confluence Cloud Migration Assistants. We’ve partnered with more than 43 top Marketplace Partners to enable automated app data migration for more than 91 Marketplace apps including customer favorites like JSU Automation Suite for Jira Workflows, SQL for Confluence (Pro Edition), HTML for Confluence and Clone Plus for Jira. For more information on migrating your apps, check out the Atlassian support documentation for Jira and Confluence.
We are committed to helping customers navigate the nuanced landscape of cloud app security to ensure Marketplace apps meet your needs. In our recent webinar on Cloud App Availability and Security, you can hear directly from Jon Mort, CTO of Adaptavist (the company behind popular apps like ScriptRunner), and the Atlassian Marketplace team about our investments in this area.
Scale and performance
”The website responds much faster and is much smoother and easier to use. So much less of a headache.”
Many of you shared your expectations for how your Atlassian products should perform and support your teams at scale. This feedback drives our continued focus and investment in these areas.
I shared some of the wins we’ve already had across key experiences in Jira Software and Confluence as a result of these investments in my December update.
We’re also on track to increase the number of users supported on a single instance of Jira Software Cloud and Confluence Cloud from 20,000 to 35,000 in 2022.
If you’re looking to move between 20,000 and 50,000 users to Cloud, you may want to learn more about the early access program we’re currently running for the next milestone in scalability – 50,000 users per instance.
When it comes to performance, we continue to focus on optimizing key experiences within our Cloud products so they’re faster. Moreover, as more of our customers migrate to Cloud, we continue to work with them to understand their use cases and prioritize improvements to further stay ahead on performance. We’ll continue to provide you with regular updates through Community and on the cloud roadmap.
Admin control
“Atlassian Access does not give us a picture of server/ on prem accounts. We currently do not have admin control over all products in the environment.”
We’ve developed Release Tracks and Sandboxes for admins who told us they’re looking for greater control to preview, test, and prepare end-users for changes to their instance.
Release Tracks offer additional predictability into changes coming to your instance and the ability to opt-in to updates from Atlassian in a fixed monthly window.
Sandboxes offer the ability to test any changes or new feature roll-outs before they get to production and ensure everything works the way it should. Customers can also license their marketplace apps for free in their sandbox, provided they have a paid version on their production site.
Plus, it’s now easier to track activities in your sandbox. To view previous actions, go to your Organization administration and from the Security tab in the top navigation select Audit log. Learn more about the audit log.
Atlassian org admins can set multiple authentication policies to apply to different subsets of users in their organization to ensure each group has the appropriate level of access. Customers also have the flexibility to exclude subsets of users from the Atlassian Access subscription with a non-billable authentication policy to better controls costs and manage adoption across the organization.
Large complex customers typically have multiple cloud Identity Providers to authenticate employees from different sub-units within their company. Being able to connect these different Identity Providers to one Atlassian Organization will help admins easily bring together their company’s users and products under one umbrella to streamline administration. This capability will be available towards the second half of the year.
Today, we have domain verification and user claim as a way to verify that a customer owns the domain they intend to manage. But we have heard from our larger customers that having to claim ownership of all users on the domain is not easy, and for some, not even possible due to complex organizational structures or legal constraints. We heard you loud and clear – we're working on functionality to empower admins to claim only the users they want to manage. With selective user claim, customers can claim a subset of users from the verified domains in their Atlassian organization.
To give admins more control over the marketplace apps used at their company, we are releasing an app data access controls feature later this year. Admins will be able to limit the access a cloud marketplace app has to your Jira and Confluence instances. We’ll continue to share updates on our cloud roadmap.
Pricing and packaging
”We want and need a simple estimate of our costs after moving to Cloud and it is nearly impossible to generate.”
In response to feedback from customers, we made it easier to calculate your costs in cloud and server and to determine what cloud could save you in hidden operational and maintenance costs.
To help ease the transition for our larger customers, we’re offering multi-year loyalty discounts for subscription purchases before July 1, 2022 and dual-licensing, which allows you to run your self-managed and cloud products in parallel during your move to cloud.
We’re also helping server and Data Center customers explore and evaluate cloud at their own pace for up to 12 months with free cloud migration trials.
Lastly, we’ve developed the cloud business case toolkit to help you communicate the value of Atlassian cloud, including understanding total cost of ownership, return on investment and how Atlassian’s cloud products can support your business objectives.
Customers who have migrated to cloud overwhelmingly tell us that they're more satisfied – admins are elevating their impact and end-users are accelerating innovation velocity, enabling them to deliver more value for their customers.
We’re committed to listening to customer feedback in order to deliver a world-class cloud experience and we’re focusing time, effort and investment on addressing challenges that customers share with us. I hope this is evident with the significant improvements we have made over the last year.
We are certainly not done yet. You can expect us to continue to deliver and you can follow our progress by checking our Cloud Roadmap or watching this article to receive a notification when I share my next update in a few months.
– Partha
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