End of server sale & support – September 2022 update

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21 December 2022: Thanks for your interest in how work is progressing on Atlassian Cloud Migration. There's a new End of server sale & support – December 2022 update now available, so this older article may no longer be actively monitored.

Hello again! Over the past 18 months, I’ve shared an update each quarter on the feedback we hear from our customers about migrations and the end of server sale and support. The work to deliver a world-class cloud experience is forging ahead and many different teams are investing time and effort on addressing the challenges our customers share, in order to better support your journey to the cloud.

Security, data management and compliance

”The products themselves are great, where there needs to be more focus is how to use these at corporations who handle security and authentication using external systems.”

Many teams are continuing to focus on delivering the foundational capabilities that ensure we retain and build trust in our cloud products; including an industry-leading security posture, the regulatory certifications required across regions and industries and the tools needed to confidently manage your data.

Data management & compliance

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.

In my last update, I covered the growth in customer interest in Data Residency, which we’ve seen continue. I’m pleased to share that our investments in the platform behind Data Residency is now bearing fruit, reducing the downtime for a migration significantly and enabling many more customers' data to be moved concurrently. We’re expecting to add Germany as a location by the end of 2022.

We continue our major investments in platform capabilities and architectural changes to support regulated industry compliance. You can explore our current certifications in our Compliance Resource Center, and all upcoming Compliance milestones on our Cloud Roadmap.

We're also making good progress in meeting our customers' Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) needs, by strengthening our platform and providing Backup and Restore tools and APIs. We built a revamped Backup and Restore tool, which is much faster and more reliable than the existing Export and Import Manager and is currently available to test by joining our Backup & Restore Early Access Program.

We recognize the need for a strong cloud-to-cloud migration tool to help enterprise customers optimize their cloud footprints. Cloud-to-cloud migration for Jira is available as part of our Early Access Program and we are up-leveling the documentation to make it very easy to understand the features and limitations. The Early Access Program for cloud-to-cloud migrations for Jira Service Management is planned for Q1 2023 and Confluence for Q3 2023.

You can see all of the upcoming Data Management milestones on our Cloud Roadmap.

Security

We continue to invest in our enterprise platform and build the security controls our customers have told us they need to effectively protect people, devices, applications, and data – wherever they're located.

Since we introduced mobile app management (MAM) earlier this year, we have continued to build additional capabilities to secure Atlassian mobile apps. We recently rolled out the ability to block compromised devices from accessing company data within the Atlassian mobile apps and are building controls for trusted Atlassian mobile apps to securely bypass IP allowlists for a frictionless collaboration experience for your users on the go.

When it comes to securing external users, an early access program (EAP) for unmanaged user security is coming in several months. The EAP will start by supporting a one-time password (OTP) sent via email. We plan to expand the capabilities beyond this as we develop the feature with customer feedback in mind. Stay tuned on how to participate in the EAP.

We’re exploring ways to expand the functionality of managing API tokens and improve the overall experience for admins so they can do so in a scalable, secure, and more granular way for their organization.

We launched user activity audit logs last year and are continuing to expand on what is covered in the audit logs, such as including authorized and unauthorized changes in Bitbucket and permission changes in Jira and Confluence.

BYOK encryption and data security policies continue to remain a priority for our teams as we work to deliver these capabilities. BYOK encryption EAP is coming soon and app access data controls will be among the first to ship within data security policies.

Visit our Cloud Roadmap to learn more about our upcoming Security capabilities.

The process of migrating

”We have recently migrating Jira server to the cloud & the product is performing better than expected. The migration (in the end) was quite simple.”

We’ve been working hard to make sure that your migration to cloud is smooth sailing so you can start taking advantage of all the new value we’re delivering in our cloud products. To help you on your journey, we provide migration tooling, guidance, and support.

When it comes to tooling, we’ve put a lot of investment here in the last couple of years to ensure that we have free cloud migration tools for all of our products. As a result, we have Cloud Migration Assistants available across our toolset.

We even recently launched migration paths for third-party apps in partnership with Marketplace Partners. We now have over 200 apps with migration paths, and more than half of those are automated using the Jira and Confluence Cloud Migration Assistants. See which Atlassian Marketplace apps have migration paths here and keep an eye out for more support to come.

And while our migration assistants are ready for you to use today, we’re continuing to invest in them to keep making the migration process better. Here are some improvements you can expect over the coming months:

• Incremental user and attachment migration to reduce downtime while migrating,

• An all-new user migration experience to help you identify which user accounts need fixing prior to migration, and

• An automated way to track and repair Jira to Confluence links – one of our most requested features.

In addition to our migration tools, we’re continuing to build on and offer more resources and guidance to help you on your journey. We have a number of helpful resources in our Atlassian Migration Program Center, like the cloud migration assessment and our Cloud vs. Data Center product comparisons. We also recently added a resource on app migrations, which offers guidance on assessing your apps and identifying cloud equivalents.

Last, but certainly not least, we provide plenty of support to our customers while migrating to ensure success. Learn about our support teams and what they can help you with. Depending on the size and complexity of your migration, we also have a large network of solution partners who can provide extra guidance and expertise.

These recent customer stories from Sophos and Lucid and EMC Insurance Companies – ”In 25 years in IT, this was the smoothest migration I’ve ever been part of” – each share how their solution partners played key roles in their migration success.

If you’re ready to get started on your journey and you’re curious about what the migration process looks like, join our upcoming cloud migration demo.

Apps and integrations

“The integration with so many 3rd party systems. It makes our single source of truth easy for tracking.”

Atlassian Open DevOps has released the toolchain page, a project administrator experience for discovering, connecting and visualizing DevOps toolchains, all within Jira Software. JSW users can access the toolchain page under Projects > Project settings to begin exploring the DevOps possibilities for their teams.

We hear that without Cloud-compatible apps available in our Marketplace, customers can’t finalize their journey to Cloud. In order to help our customers to proceed with their migration-to-Cloud process and avoid any potential roadblocks, we released an App Alternatives page.

As of today, this page includes more than 100 alternative solutions to those Jira and Confluence apps that, due to technical limitations or confirmed intentions to not migrate, do not have a Cloud version. These alternatives have been assessed and selected based on specific criteria, like the ability to fulfill similar customer needs.

We will continue to update the App Alternatives documentation, so our customers can always find an up-to-date list of solutions that can support them in taking conscious decisions on their journey to Cloud. At the same time, we will continue to work closely with our Marketplace partners to increase the selection of apps available in Cloud.

We also aim to address security and data residency with the development of our Forge platform, where partners can build their apps hosting data in our Atlassian infrastructure, and Cloud Fortified security program.

To learn more about how to begin assessing your apps in preparation for a move to cloud, visit the new app assessment page offered as part of the Atlassian Migration Program.

Scale and performance

”Performance has improved as well as the responsive speeds. Server VM maintenance & backup is no longer an issue.”

We’re excited to announce that we’ve increased the number of users supported on a single instance of Jira Software Cloud and Confluence Cloud from 20,000 to 35,000. While this is a huge win, we want to continue to partner with you to ensure that as we increase the number of users that can be supported on a single instance that we’re addressing your unique use cases. We’re currently running an early access program for 50,000 users per instance through December. If you’re interested in participating or want to learn more, please contact our Enterprise Advocates team.

Meeting the scale and performance expectations that our customers have for Atlassian products remains among our top priorities. We’ll continue to provide you with regular updates through Community and on the Cloud Roadmap as work progresses.

Set up, configuration and administration

“Need much more detailed permission structure (like active directory). Nested groups. Set permissions on pages of a space WITHOUT need to permit permission on whole space. Recursive permissions on subpages.”

We’re another step closer to supporting customers who need to flatten nested groups between AzureAD and Atlassian Access to assist in their cloud migrations, with an Early Access Program now open.

Nested groups are typically used for permission inheritance or to recreate the company’s structure in your external user directory. Nested groups aren’t supported in Atlassian Cloud, but you can keep the nested structure in your external user directory and use the flattened one in Cloud. You can find more detail on how to prepare nested groups for Cloud migration in our documentation.

In my last few updates, I’ve shared Release Tracks and Sandboxes which we developed in response to admins who told us they are looking for greater control to preview, test, and prepare end-users for changes to their instance.

It can be difficult to understand exactly what a user has access to and how different groups affect that user's access without more visibility across all products, so we're making the administration of Atlassian Cloud products better and starting to centralize user management across all our products.

We want your admin hub experience to be simple, fast, scalable and expandable. Organization-level user and group administration now offers a single location to manage user access across Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Confluence. We’re also moving closer to centralizing all user access information across more than just those core products.

To help our customers scale user access management, we recently launched support for multiple identity providers. It empowers customers to quickly consolidate user management of an acquired company’s identity provider within the parent company and gives customers the option to maintain separate identity providers for separate departments' domains within a company. Admins can now also set the default authentication policy as a non-billable policy when not synced with an identity provider.

Today, customers can leverage Atlassian Access to enforce SAML SSO and to sync users and groups via SCIM user provisioning to provide access to Atlassian Cloud products, such as Jira Software and Confluence. We are expanding SAML SSO support for Jira Service Management portal-only customer accounts and SCIM support to automate group user provisioning with Trello.

We hear you and understand that being able to claim a subset of users after verifying your domain(s) is a critical need for admins who can only manage the users they’re responsible for. Selective user claim will allow that to happen and is coming soon.

You can find out more about our plans for simplifying administration, centralized permissions view and granular admin roles on our Cloud Roadmap.

Admins will also soon be able to view detailed release notes and subscribe to email updates for changes rolling out to your organization’s cloud products via admin.atlassian.com. You can follow this and other enhancements we’re delivering for Administration on our Cloud Roadmap.

Pricing and packaging

”We plan to have a project this year to investigate our options. We are not sure what if anything will have the same level of features, but it's a cost-benefit analysis we will be performing.”

We recently talked to Atlassian product owners Cynthia and Paul at Sun Life, a Canadian financial services firm in Toronto. They completed their 7,000 user migration to Jira Software and Confluence Cloud to “be agile, move quickly, provide a better experience for our teams, and deliver value ⁠– not just control costs” and they haven’t looked back. Since migrating, they:

• recognized $250K in time savings captured in just the first 10 months post-migration

• their teams are happier than ever, with a 97% Atlassian Cloud user satisfaction score to prove it (read their story).

With Server EOL just over 5 quarters away and the average cloud migration taking ~3-4 quarters, there’s no better time to get started. Starting your journey today gets you one step closer to the best (and last) upgrade you’ll ever do.

We know that migrating is a big investment, so to help you communicate the value of cloud to your stakeholders and leadership, this new resource is a great place to start. Additionally, we recommend exploring eligibility for the following migration incentives and discounts:

• Avoid losing the value of your unused server maintenance with step-up credits.

• Explore Cloud features and start a proof of concept with a cloud migration trial.

• And for the additional complexity enterprise organizations face, save on costs and avoid double paying with dual licensing and loyalty discounts.

Rename ‘epics‘

I shared in last quarter’s update that the ability to rename Epics in Jira Software Cloud is now available in a beta version for you to test out ahead of a full feature release in 2023. Intended to support the variety of Agile frameworks practiced today, we’ve seen this feature receive particular demand from customers trying to implement a SAFe (Story → Feature → Epic) issue hierarchy. The beta offers the chance for you to test out the changes in sandbox and test environments, prepare guides and training materials for your teams, and provide us with feedback so we can improve it for you. Join the private Epic-Renaming Beta Community Group for more details on the beta and to enable it for your test instance.

Atlassian Analytics & Atlassian Data Lake

Lastly, Atlassian Analytics and the Atlassian Data Lake are now available to Cloud Enterprise customers of Jira Software or Jira Service Management in Open Beta.

Many of our Enterprise customers have been looking for a more streamlined way to query and analyze their vast Jira and Jira Service Management data to generate insights about resourcing, issue flow, service bottlenecks, and other processes that can deliver more value.

The Atlassian Data Lake is a single place to access data across all Atlassian products, starting with JSW, and JSM. We are expanding access to Opsgenie and Insight (Assets) as part of the Open Beta. With pre-modeled, enriched, and cross-product data available out of the box, the Atlassian Data Lake eliminates the need for extensive data preparation and management to generate insights.

Atlassian Analytics is an enterprise-grade data visualization layer that seamlessly connects to the Atlassian Data Lake and will empower both business and technical teams to easily build highly interactive and custom dashboards.

Customers are using these capabilities to get more out of their Atlassian data including:

• Cross-product insights – Combine data from Jira Service Management, Jira Software, and beyond to understand the impact of both IT and development practices on revenue, resource allocation, and other real-world business outcomes

• Customization & flexibility – Different visualizations, commenting, exporting data, scheduling a subscription, sending out an email with a PDF, and building drill-down dashboards are available.

• Template Dashboards – Flexible template dashboards automatically populate when a data lake connection is created

Learn more about setting up Atlassian Analytics as a Cloud Enterprise customer in our support documentation. Atlassian Analytics and Atlassian Data Lake will be generally available for Cloud Enterprise customers in the coming months.

Thanks for reading through what is always a jam-packed article. I hope it’s clear from this and each of my previous articles, how important feedback from our customers is to ensure we’re heading in the right direction. If you watch this article, you’ll receive a notification when I share my update next quarter and until then you can follow the many milestones on our journey via our Cloud Roadmap and Data Center Roadmap.

– Partha