What I learned at Team '21

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This week, many of us settled in (behind our screens) for Atlassian Team ’21, a fully digital experience celebrating effective teamwork. As an Atlassian who’s been working behind the scenes on our “Journey to cloud” track content for the past few months, I’m sharing my biggest takeaways from our migration-focused sessions.

Did you have any a-ha moments or learnings at Team ’21? Share in the comments below! 

1. What I wish I’d known: Moving Splunk’s 10,000 users to cloud with Greg Warner from Splunk: Human biases and preference for the “way we’ve always done things” might be holding teams back from reaching their full potential. Ultimately, the role of an admin is to set the business up for success and align with what the business needs are going forward. Greg realized his own biases were affecting his perception of cloud. Once he opened the door to considering it, he realized cloud would unlock long-term value and productivity for his teams… and was a better choice than kicking the can down the road and switching to a self-managed solution that felt more familiar.
   
   

2. Migrating in a highly regulated environment: de Volksbank’s move to the cloud with Erik van der Meijde from de Volksbank and Irvin Hoogland from Quint: Atlassian cloud is the right choice for the majority of our customers, even highly regulated companies like de Volksbank: the 4th largest bank in the Netherlands. Ultimately, the cloud benefits of focusing more on their core competency of banking and scaling easily outweighed any resistance from regulators or internal compliance and security teams. Atlassian is ready for highly regulated enterprises now, so if you’ve written cloud off in the past, it’s time to reconsider. If you’re in a highly regulated environment, get your compliance team involved early and don’t be afraid to be an early adopter in your industry.
   
   

3. Insuring the future: Northwestern Mutual’s journey from Data Center to cloud with Bryan Darr from Expium and Michael Stewart from Northwestern Mutual: Northwestern Mutual had a complex Data Center instance to migrate: 6,000 JSW & JSM users, 1.4M issues, and 1,270 projects. This made planning and testing mission critical - especially for migrating the team’s Marketplace apps. They decided to move to cloud to save money (25% expected cost savings) but also to take advantage of cloud-only and better-in-cloud features. Northwestern Mutual was most excited about native automation, Advanced Roadmaps and team-managed projects in cloud. If you’re starting a migration, take some advice from a large and complex one: manage expectations internally, share the load with a partner if you need one, and keep end users informed.
   
   

4. How server’s #1 fan became a cloud champion with Alexander Post from venITUre and Samsoor Hemat from venITure: It’s important to re-think your business decisions and challenge your own assumptions. Even if you started on-premise or consider yourself “server’s #1 fan,” now is the right time to re-consider the value of Atlassian’s cloud solutions. VenITure, a global Solution Partner based in Germany, moved to cloud to get immediate access to the latest features, reduce cost, and outsource compliance and data security to Atlassian. If you’ve been a big fan of server, it’s not too late to give cloud a chance.
   
   

5. How a journey to the cloud helps a fintech leader deliver quality products with Tonislava Docheva from Xray, Vadim Sadovskiy from Securrency, and Dmytro Pivney from Securrency: Moving to cloud allowed Securrency to spend 50% less on maintenance and operational overhead without sacrificing the security, stability or reliability that was critical to the fintech company. Every team is different, so every migration will be too. Securrency was able to make the move to cloud in under 3 months and started reaping the benefits of per user licensing costs almost immediately. 
   
   

If Team ’21 made you curious about cloud or ready to migrate, here are a few easy things you can do to get started on your journey to cloud today:

1. Activate a free cloud migration trial (free and easy, no credit card required!)

2. Register for the cloud migration demo with live Q&A with Atlassian’s Cloud Migration Managers

3. Download:

   1. Cloud business case toolkit if you’re building your business case for cloud or educating stakeholders

   2. Intro to migrations eBook if you’re wondering how to begin your migration

   3. Cloud migration toolkit if you’re actively planning or testing a migration

[Sri Kumar]

Thanks for Summarizing your experience @Elizabeth Howden