End of server sale & support - November 2023 update

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Hey Community,

It’s Sarah and I’m back with the latest update.

Since we announced the end of Server sale and support in October 2020, we’ve been sharing regular updates to help the Atlassian Community navigate the journey to cloud. 

With less than 100 days til February 15, 2024, our teams continue to diligently listening to your feedback, identify ways to better support you and your teams, and improve both our cloud offerings and migration capabilities. Our goal is to ensure you have all the latest updates, tools, and resources you need to make your move to cloud as smooth as possible.

In this post, we’ll break down what we’ve been hearing this last quarter and how we’re focusing our efforts to support you.

Security, data management, and compliance

“Would like to see my organization move to Atlassian cloud but still too many concerns about the security from my security team. I would like to be better equipped to have those conversations with my security engineers on why the Atlassian Cloud is as secure as on premises.”

One of the many benefits of moving to Cloud is that Atlassian can take on an increased role in protecting your data. Your team will be supported by our team of experts who are constantly adding new features to increase your defense against the growing threats of cybercrime and fulfill regulatory demands. We’re focused on ensuring resilience at scale and comprehensive data protection, while providing you with the visibility and control you need to ensure your security and compliance needs are met.

Comprehensive data protection

Many of our recent launches have been focused on strengthening data protection within our products, like the new early access program (EAP) for Confluence BYOK encryption or the general availability of BYOK encryption for Jira. We also opened a new EAP for SSO for Jira Service Management customer-only accounts.

To support you in meeting your compliance obligations, data residency continues to be a top priority and we’re moving faster than ever to deliver on our commitments. This year alone, we’ve introduced two new regions (Singapore and Canada), expanded the scope of data coverage, and expanded our capabilities to include Marketplace apps and Jira Product Discovery. We will continue to accelerate our efforts here and are confident that we’ll deliver the next six regions in time for our next update.

We’re also expanding support for regulated industries through:

• HIPAA compliance support for all paid plans so teams of all sizes can take advantage of our HIPAA program. This expansion also comes with improved notifications in Jira Software and Jira Service Management.

• TISAX Level 2 certification to support teams that work in the automotive industry in Germany.

We know that many of you have also been waiting to hear about our plans for FedRAMP. We’ve recently shared an update on our timeline for FedRAMP: we’re on pace to have our In Process designation via agency authorization by Q2 2024 and our Moderate Authorization to Operate by Q1 2025. Furthermore, we have expanded the scope of our initial offering to include Jira Service Management Cloud, on top of Jira Software and Confluence.

Visibility and control

We’re also working to bring you more visibility and control so you can better assess and manage risk. For example, last quarter we opened up an EAP for a new rule under data security policies that allows org admins to allow or block all Marketplace apps from accessing content in selected Confluence spaces.

Set up, configuration, and administration

“Some critical enterprise features are missing from the platform: not being able to customize the login screen, not being able to disable the recommended apps, not being able to block our users from creating Atlassian tenants…”

One of the many benefits of moving to Cloud is that Atlassian can take on an increased role in protecting your data. Your team will be supported by our team of experts who are constantly adding new features to increase your defense against the growing threats of cybercrime and fulfill regulatory demands. We’re focused on ensuring resilience at scale and comprehensive data protection, while providing you with the visibility and control you need to ensure your security and compliance needs are met.

Centralized visibility and control

As a reminder, Atlassian Administration (admin.atlassian.com) is our mission control center for Cloud admins - offering advanced customizations, insights, and controls to move teamwork forward.

This past quarter, we focused on improvements in admin controls and customizations. Admins are often responsible for establishing and monitoring security policies for their organizations - and the more insights and controls they have, the better. In September, we released a new admin control- product requests - so admins can more easily manage and resolve user-created instances, a common form of shadow IT, for their Cloud Enterprise products. This control enhances admins ability to set a policy and manage user-created instances.

In addition to our net-new feature, product requests, we enhanced Automatic Product Discovery, an Atlassian Access feature for admins to see what user-created instances exist in their organization. We added a ‘last active date’ field so admins can quickly view and prioritize which active user-created instances to address.

Customizations in cloud

On the customization front, we released a long-awaited customization, Custom Domains for Jira Service Management Help Center, which is currently in early-access. Now, admins can create a branded subdomain for your organization.

Apps and integrations

“There are a number of plug-ins that we use that are not available for cloud. Also, some of the plug-ins that are available for cloud do not have feature parity between the DC and cloud offerings.”

As always, we encourage you to follow this and other enhancements we’re delivering for Administration on our Cloud Roadmap.

End of Server app sales for Bamboo and Crowd

As we continue on our journey to cloud, we’ve been winding down Server app sales on our Marketplace in stages. An upcoming milestone on this journey will be the end of Server app sales for Bamboo and Crowd after November 19th.

App availability and alternatives

Atlassian is continuing to work with our Marketplace Partners to ensure they have what they need to build cloud versions of their apps that perform the same key functions. We also recommend to our partners that they document any differences in functionality between their Server and Cloud apps to share with customers.

If you find that an app or a key app use case is not available in Cloud, we recommend you review our App Alternatives documentation to see if there are alternative apps that perform a similar functionality.

For those of you looking for more cloud apps, new apps are being added on Atlassian Marketplace every day.

Cloud Migration Trials now include apps

As of last quarter, you can add participating apps as part of your Cloud Migration Trial to test app functionality while you explore Atlassian cloud products.

To learn more about how to assess your apps in preparation for a move to cloud, visit our app assessment page. You can also leverage the Privacy & Security tab on the Marketplace to streamline your app security assessments. We recommend starting your app assessment early, especially if you have multiple apps to assess.

Pricing and packaging

“My company is going through a hard time, writing red numbers. That's why there is an investment stop. It is clear that the investment in Cloud will pay off over the years, but for now we don't get the "go" from the management. I am already in contact with our Atlassian Solution Partner and Atlassian to figure out a possible solution and creating a business case.”

New offers and more to help you build your business case

We know getting your organization on board to make the move to cloud requires some upfront research. Migration is the path to unlocking cloud-only functionality like Analytics and Atlassian Intelligence, and it’s also an opportunity to optimize ways of working to better meet the needs of your teams. With our business case toolkit, you can help your team gain a better understanding of how Atlassian’s cloud products can decrease your total cost of ownership, increase ROI, and support your business objectives.

Take advantage of new limited-time offers to ease the transition:

• Start a Cloud Migration Trial: Activate your trial before November 30, 2023, to get a free 6 months or the duration of your Data Center subscription - whichever is longer. This is a great way to explore and assess cloud, understand how cloud differs from self-managed products, try participating Marketplace apps, and plan your migration.

• Use step-up credits: Apply any maintenance left on your Server maintenance as a credit towards your cloud subscription.

• Explore dual licensing: As we approach February 15, our largest migrators may feel especially pressed for time to migrate bigger, more complex instances. But, rest assured, if you purchase an annual cloud subscription between September 12, 2023 - February 15, 2024, Atlassian & participating Marketplace partners will offer up to one year of Server support. This ensures that you won’t introduce security risks by remaining on an unsupported Server instance during your migration journey. To be eligible, the annual cloud subscription must be for 1,001 or more users (Jira Software, Jira Work Management, or Confluence) or 251 or more agents (Jira Service Management).

The process of migrating

As we approach the end of support for Server, the significance of a seamless and straightforward migration journey becomes even more critical. Since that original announcement, migrating to the cloud has become significantly easier thanks to expanded tooling capabilities, resources, and support. We’ve invested heavily in each of these areas to ensure that your migration experience is always improving, whether it is smoother, more intuitive, or faster.

We continue to focus on improving the end-to-end migration experience by optimizing Cloud Migration Assistance (CMAs). With targeted improvements like enhancing visibility into your migration, better performance, usability, and new resources, you can more easily envision what the journey to cloud will be like for you and feel confident on how you will achieve it.

Visibility

We tend to see that our most successful migrations are driven by admins who take the time to understand and prepare their data for cloud before migrating, avoiding unnecessary failed migration tests at the end of their journey. To that effect, we’ve made several improvements to our Cloud Migration Assistants (CMAs) that allows you to better assess and clean-up your data before you migrate.

We know, talking to many of you, that migrating apps continues to be a particular area of friction when moving to the cloud. Which is why we've launched features that help you understand how you’re using apps today, as well as, identifying app issues proactively:

• App Usage for Jira is a Marketplace App that provides in-depth insights into how your Server and Data Center Marketplace apps are being used today.

• App Assessment Resources and Tools is a suite of resources that help you create a holistic picture of your current app footprint, helping you decide what needs to be migrated to cloud.

• App Vendor Checks is a unique feature that allows you to view the results of pre-migration checks that Marketplace Partners have run on your apps.

• App License Check proactively checks that all apps in your migration plan have active cloud app licenses on the destination site.

• App Notification Check ensures that all of your cloud apps are registered to receive migration notifications.

Scale & performance

We believe that fast and predictable migration plans are non-negotiable. As a result, we have prioritized the dependability of data portability in the CMAs. A series of continual investments have been made so that you never have to think about how you're moving your data, but can instead focus on the why and the business outcomes you are looking to drive. In JCMA and CCMA we’ve seen significant increases in migration plan success rates as a result of new customer-facing interventions, improved error monitoring, and a ruthless prioritization for eliminating known issues.

User experience

And finally, we have enhanced our tooling and created new resources that make the experience of migrating simpler, creating efficiencies and optimizations that allow you to migrate quicker. Launched at Team '23, the cloud blueprint is an excellent resource for organizations that are looking to arrive at a clear, strategic plan and set themselves up for long-term success in the cloud. In both JCMA and CCMA, we have released functionality to allow for App migration reruns, ensuring that when an App fails at the end of a migration, it does not mean the migration has failed. Additionally, you can now monitor your app migration with downloadable progress logs for greater visibility into migration issues. In the near future, we plan to introduce automation to the assessment process, helping improve and expedite the end-to-end experience.

A successful migration doesn’t stop after data and users are migrated, it also includes the adoption of the cloud offering. We’ve enhanced the Cloud Adoption Toolkit to help your team confidently plan for organizational change management to ensure a successful adoption journey.

We hope that these investments continue to help you on your migration journey.

Plan your migration now

I’ll close this update with a recap of the heaps of innovation we’ve been delivering across our Cloud platform and solutions that help teams deliver value faster, collaborate more effectively, and operate more efficiently.

In addition to what we’ve already covered, the top 5 new products and capabilities I’m most excited about today are:

1. Loom acquisition: Atlassian has entered an agreement to acquire Loom, a video messaging platform that helps users communicate through instantly shareable videos. Soon, engineers will be able to visually log issues in Jira; leaders can use videos to connect with employees at scale; sales teams can send tailored video updates to clients and HR teams can onboard new employees with personalized welcome videos.

2. Airtrack acquisition: Atlassian has acquired AirTrack. AirTrack helps enterprises gather, aggregate, and analyze multiple sources of data used across IT, making it easier to pinpoint and remediate issues. With AirTrack, Jira Service Management will provide customers with a fuller, more accurate picture of all critical assets, minimizing operational risks, costs, and attack surfaces

3. Approvers within the releases Hub (Jira): Release managers can now assign approvers to a release and easily get sign-off & feedback from stakeholders before making a ‘go’ decision to launch software to market.

4. Progress tracking for release hub (Jira): As the version gets underway, its true progress will be reflected in the unified progress bar.

5. APIs for issue-level archival: With APIs for issue-level archival, admins can archive and restore old issues as often as they like.

Thank you again to all of you who continue to share your feedback. Your input helps us shape our approach to delivering a world-class cloud experience. In addition to these updates, our Cloud Roadmap and Data Center Roadmap continue to be the go-to sources to follow our progress. You can also ‘Watch’ this article to be notified when we share our next update.

Let us know what you’re most excited about trying.