To all Atlassian server champions - we want to hear from you

[David Willson]

My Atlassian spark and excitement has gone out. As a result I've decided to step down from the role of community leader.

People are important, and any one person, statistically might not be. As just a individual I likely will fall into that category. That doesn't invalidate the sadness and disappointment that I feel, but when you stop caring, and when the thoughtful forward thinking messages sent by Atlassian
about building great teams, now ring hollow, instead of creating inspiration, it's time for change.

I am still gobsmacked by the fact that Atlassian is willing to write off 30 000 customers.

"It will be difficult to forecast how our 30,000 server customers will react to our recently announced end-of-life plans" (page 15)
https://s2.q4cdn.com/141359120/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/TEAM-Q1-2021-Shareholder-Letter.pdf.

For everyone looking for alternatives the best site I have seen is https://bye-bye-server.com/.

C'est la vie. Bonne chance.

[Davin Studer]

Sorry to hear that you will stepping away from being a community leader. I wish you well in your future endeavors.

[Alex Janes]

@David Willson Sorry to see you go. But sadly, I don't entirely blame you.

[Metin Savignano]

Quoting from @Cameron Deatsch 's reply of October 17th

Lastly, on your request for lower Data Center tiers, we hear you loud and clear. At this time the entry point for Data Center is the 500 user license and we have no plans to add lower tiers.

Thanks for the clear statement. You hear us, and you will not respond. 

So Atlassian wants small and medium business customers to switch to cloud or leave for good.

[David Holshouser]

Curious if this is the perfect place to start talking about alternatives.

I'm personally leaning toward gitlab, but I'd be open to other options.

[christophecariou]

Ho David, 

Yes gitlab is an alternative.

Tuleap, xWiki,... Here are some other names...

Is Atlassian realizing they're going to lose thousands of avocates/evangelist around the World?

Very sad and disappointed

[Vicky Blease]

Someone else recommended https://www.openproject.org in another thread.

I'm waiting for my devops team to spin up a Linux server so I can trial this out. It looks like a decent replacement for our internal intranet/wiki; we would never put this on cloud infrastructure due to the sensitive content.

[Julius Zatroch]

Here is best guide for now:

https://bye-bye-server.com/ 

[Robert Ross]

Our company just did switch from on-prem to Cloud for Jira and Confluence.  We moved to GitLab instead of Bitbucket.  All the experiences have been objectively awful. First off, the migration tools are terrible, even for Atlassian's own products.  Linkages between Confluence and Jira were all broken, many plugins had to be fully reconfigured, etc.  

We switched to GitLab and have had an even more awful experience. And we're paying customers. The support is terrible, and the Bitbucket importer has massive glaring holes in capability. For example, if you do a squash merge on an old PR, the importer will not bring over any of the original commits or show a code diff. It literally brings over an "empty" MR. I 100% regret moving to GitLab right now.

Beyond all that, Atlassian's cloud products are straight-up worse than the old on-prem versions.  They have removed all sorts of capabilities that worked quite well on the old version in favor of "new" UI that are terrible.  For example:

• You can no longer reference a previously added attachment in a Jira ticket on a new comment.  You can only attach something new.
• If you reference a Jira ticket from Confluence, you no longer have the option to show only the ticket and status.  It is either the full description of the ticket (including title) or a plain link.
• Inline image management in Jira and Confluence is awful and extremely buggy.

I find it mind-boggling that Atlassian would foster this much bad will from people who used to love Atlassian products by being heavy-handed and forcing people over to an immature and objectively worse product.

[Michael Woffenden]

Agreed Robert! Cloud is an unmitigated disaster and Server/DC is delightful.

I just wonder.  How could Atlassian have gone so far astray?

[ITMAGE]

We like many here have been taken completely by surprise with this announcement. Being a small solutions provider, earlier this year we opted for a starter 10 user license for Jira and Confluence, as well as a 3 user for Service Desk and have been greatly using them. Up until this announcement the plan was to purchase a 25 user license for both Confluence and Jira in anticipation of hiring additional staff next year. However this will not occur until August or September 2021 (at the earliest) which is also when we hope to have the budget in place - and this is after Feb 2021 deadline.

I am trying to look at this objectively, but I have to say it's difficult since we feel rather slighted and so that being said here's our take on this:

• Many of our clients are between 5 and 40 users and can not afford DC nor do they have the desire, ability, nor resources to move to the cloud.
• Files : File repositories are in the hundreds of gigabytes with trade secrets which are not permitted in a cloud environment - just can't do it.
• Contracts : We have contracts to keep data in-house on our servers. Actually one of the very reasons our clients choose us is because they do not trust nor want their data in a cloud environment.
• Automation : We have a considerable amount of custom automation (including in the Postegres instances) which is just not feasible to move to the cloud.
• Security and Stability : We and some of our clients have been burned by cloud providers both in functionality changes/removal (almost invariably cited as 're imagined' or 'improved'), security compromises in one form or another, price increases and so on. Security and stability of the environment are absolutely paramount and so hosting locally ensures these factors.
• Resources: We are working at the very edge of our resources/time trying to meet multiple deadlines; there's just no time to even consider a migration for the foreseeable future (at least 2 years)

Options for Atlassian

We just don't have many ways forward here since moving to the cloud is a non-negotiable point. That being the premise, here are some potential avenues Atlassian can take to help us and by the same token demonstrate some good will:

1. Allow the continued purchase of 'server' licenses throughout the support period ending in 2024, or at the very least extend it to 31 Dec 2021.
2. Create a much lower DC tier such as 25 user Confluence and Jira, and keep the price the same as it is now for the server products.
3. If nothing else at least consider offering existing customers 1/2 price on server licenses which existing budgets may permit before Feb 2021. Perhaps this can manifest itself in the form of various product bundles such as a 25 user Confluence and Jira license bundled together for $3000 - just a thought.

I believe the above are all quite reasonable, will demonstrate good will, Atlassian has little to nothing to lose by enacting them (Atlassian should make more money here) and will afford more time for your 'server' customers to get their bearings rather than resulting in upsetting an important segment of your base. I understand that in this business things are constantly in flux and that it is quite challenging to forecast events more than 3 to 5 years, but what Atlassian is doing here by terminating new license purchases so quickly in Feb 2021, is at least in my opinion, wrong and borderline unethical and is leaving us in a real quandary trying to force a hand. I can firmly say we would never do this to our clients and is no way to treat a loyal customer base. Trust is important here.

The hard reality here is that if no solution/compromise can be reached, then we and a sizable portion of our clients will reluctantly be forced to explore other in-house alternatives (even if they are not as good a fit). Lastly I find the timing of this to be possibly one of the worst, as most everyone is struggling with this pandemic. I don't need to say that people are losing their jobs, their lives, businesses are going under and funding is drying up all over. This is,,, well,, it certainly doesn't look good. I grew up believing in integrity and doing the right thing, where a handshake was good enough and so I'm rather disappointed as I expected more.

Thanks for your time.

[Tom Shaffer]

And with your well-written, constructive, and informative post, you received silence in return.

[Mirek]

Hi @Cameron Deatsch

I always give objective feedback looking at positives however few things on this journey to Cloud still worries me and I cannot give opinion is this a good or bad.. 

I am part of Atlassian ecosystem for many years.. I saw many changes .. some good some bad... But definitively I know that gathering feedback about server real usage should be done far before announcing that you end selling it.. Based on this you few years back should decide about the roadmap and what is important, so that this could be a smooth and fair transition to everyone.

It was simple as starting a direct discussion with all of your server customers like that called "What if in next year you have to end using Server.. What you would do?" and you would get exactly the feedback that you can use to see if ecosystem is ready and simply drive it or postpone a little bit the decision to still prepare this and that.. or give people a early notice that you consider this when there is a chance so that we can start focus on details or not spend money in the last 2 years for customizing server instances with server apps and integrations to do it again..

Now in such sort time we have to give a recommendation to all of our customers based on emotions and without proper preparation usually see as a result higher cost in all options.. It was not quite good way of removing a offering that made us where we are now..

Anyway I am not a top article writer but I decided to put few more words from a perspective of a old Atlassian user that born without Clouds and had many journeys already..

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Atlassian-Cloud-Migration/Journey-to-Cloud-is-a-great-vision-but/ba-p/1510925

Grab a cup of coffee, read if you want.. if you agree it is fine put a like button, if not it is also fine.. That is all the point.. we all have different perspective we can like something or not and different way of handling things.. we have a choice and we should still have it until it is really ridiculous or non-logical. Together as a TEAM we can get to a solutions that would make everyone happy, but if we would be hit by more and more that kind of short notice announcements and quickly decide we cannot do much to make it smooth and we can some day lose motivation to even do it..

Anyway I still hope in a long perspective the decision that you make at Atlassian are good and of course personally as a loyal person you can count on my feedback and expertise on many things as usual, but definitively that need to work in both ways..

[Thorsten Twellmann]

I was always a fan of working with Atlassian tools and happy to recommend it to peers in our industry.

We are a small enterprise (<100 users) working in a regulated environment (medical devices, FDA/CE) with strict requirements on validation of process tools before roll out to production and on data retention. Jira is a critical tool for our operations for more than 9 years. We made significant investments for setting up Jira and connecting it with other tools. We even started to develop own plugins for this purpose.

My current understanding of your move is that Atlassian forces us to look for alternatives, because:

Switching to Data Center would result in a ridiculous cost increase of approx. factor 5-6 without actually getting relevant new functionality. We might manage to address validation requirements, but we would have to pay the full price of an (for us anyways much oversized) license even during the 10 year data retention period starting when the last project using Jira/Confluence was finished.

Jira Cloud would not allows us to fullfil validation requirements due to the number, frequency and lead time for new version rolled out by Atlassian.

Besides, asking companies in regulated environments to evaluate, make a decision and move to a new deployment until Q1/2021 is also really ridiculous. This leaves me with a bad feeling if you now ask/force me to move to Jira Cloud which makes the company even more dependent on Atlassian.

I would really like to hear from Atlassian what they recommend small and medium enterprises in regulated environments like medical device development, aerospace, automotive, pharma,.. Do these companies not belong to your target group anymore?    

[Stephen Sifers]

Hello Thorsten,

We remain committed to supporting our small and mid-sized customers. In fact, the overwhelming majority of our 150,000 cloud customers are small and mid-sized businesses like yours, many with compliance requirements we support or are working to address in cloud. From a compliance perspective, are there specific regulations that we should be aware of for your organization, or is it simply an internal policy that all data must be managed in house? 

I also want to address your concern about timing and reassure you there’s no need to move to a new deployment immediately. We’re making server support available for three more years to give you time to review our roadmaps, understand our cloud products, and make the best decision for your organization based on your unique requirements. We will continue to strengthen our cloud products so that they meet your security or compliance requirements by the end of support in February 2024.

We’re also working on improved capabilities for sandbox and change management in our cloud products (testing and rolling out new features to your organization). It sounds like you have some specific requirements for that, which we’d love to learn more about.

Lastly, on your request for lower Data Center tiers, we’ve heard your feedback. At this time the entry point for Data Center is the 500 user license and we have no plans to add lower tiers. However, we will continue to capture input from our customers and partners in this area to make sure we have offerings that meet your needs. And to ease the transition to Data Center, we also offer existing server customers multi-year discounts on your subscription.

Respectfully,
Stephen SIfers

[David Willson]

@Stephen Sifersdoes it not seem crazy that a 60 person company needs to buy a 500 user license? Just nuts.

[ITMAGE]

I agree.

There is no stretch of the imagination where we, nor any of our clients can afford this. A 500 user ANNUAL license is simply outside the realm of possibility for any of our use cases. And to do this during a pandemic is just,,, I dunno, it's disappointing to put it mildly.

[Tuelle]

@Stephen Sifers Thanks for your reply. Regarding applicable regulations, Jira Server as it is today is good. We need to track for every action who, when, what and why. Our major concern with the cloud is the fact that we HAVE to validate all our workflows and tools BEFORE role out. That also means that we do not role out a version, if required for months, if there is a blocking defect. This statement is based on our experience with another product that pushes new versions as docker images to customers on a frequent basis. It is a constant PAIN. Workarounds are often quite a hassle and therefore not an option because they would often require that the formal standard operating procedures and work instructions in our audited ISO-13485 compliant quality management system need to be modified.

The way you are handling this issue does not motivate us much to put our company even more in your hands by moving to your cloud solution. If you say that Atlassian thinks a 500 seat license is appropriate for small and mid-sized businesses, it is more likely that we use the remaining time to say goodbye to Atlassian products than with spending time to bring an Atlassian Cloud to a level that we already have today with Atlassian Server. 

[a.stucki@solcept.ch]

@Tuellethis is exactly what we think about: invest into Atlassian and then they let us down again or invest the same ¡considerable! amount of time into another solution.

Especially in the light of "agile" management deciding to stop one product with possible solutions needed in many different industries (residency, certification, certifiability, version control, data control...) just vaporware.

[Erick van Rijk]

@Tuelle 

Seems like we are in the same business with medical regulations. Rapid upgrades are a big NO for anyone in a regulated industry. I tried to explain that our NB will never accept external control of critical data such as a QMS, but it appears that Atlassian does not (want to) understand the limitations of the cloud.

[Tuelle]

Yes, we are also developing medical devices. Luckily there have appeared several attractive alternatives to Jira and Confluence since our decision to go with Atlassian.

[Erick van Rijk]

Mind sharing the candidates? I've have not found anything that has a nice integration like Jira/Confluence. Its either targeted a purely documentation or development.

[Michael Schlueter _secunet_]

Dear @Cameron Deatsch ,

I have been an Atlassian server champion in my company for the last 11 years. I have introduced Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket to many teams in the company. For the first time, I'm not sure if I can recommend Atlassian products to my colleagues and to my management anymore.

While the data center license might be an option for our large 2000 user instance (have to check the pricing), we also have a couple of smaller instances (25 - 100 user) that reside in separate, strongly restricted network segments for security reasons.

What we need from your (Atlassian) side is a strong statement that the data center option is not just a compromise in your strategie as it seems to be now. We also need an affordable  on premise solution  for smaller  license tiers.

I am afraid that you do not have too much time to fix this. The discussions regarding alternatives have already been started. Btw. a cloud based solution will never be an option for us.

 Regards

Michael

[Cameron Deatsch]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your involvement in the Atlassian community. We are continuing to invest in Data Center specifically for larger enterprise clients. You can see the Data Center roadmap here: 

https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/data-center

You are not alone in your request for lower Data Center tiers. We can't commit to that now but are currently gathering data in this area.

Specifically, why will your company never use Cloud? Does your company use no SAAS software from other vendors?

I realize you may look to alternative vendors. If you do choose to go with a different vendor, would you be willing to have a discussion via Zoom so we can understand why you went that direction?

[Michael Schlueter _secunet_]

Hi Cameron,

Thanks for your answer; I understand that these are busy and unpleasant days for you and your team.

My company will never use cloud based solutions because of very strict security policies required by our customers. It's kinda funny that you suggest a Zoom session to discuss these things. The use of Zoom is strictly forbidden in the company and I'm not aware of any SAAS software that is used. It could only be the cases for scenarios where only public data is used. 

We could have an E-Mail conversation though.

Regards

Michael

[Alex Janes]

Does your company use no SAAS software from other vendors?

@Cameron Deatsch You keep asking this question, but you are missing the point. We use Office 365. But, I don't store my critical patient data in the cloud, even if they are HIPAA compliant. The HIPAA compliancy from Microsoft lets me not worry about an email that might contain PHI. Not because I fully trust it and will now store all my patient data up there.

All of that is stored in on-premise databases. We created Jira workflows to handle this PHI, and the data CAN NOT AND SHOULD NOT EVER LEAVE our systems. Therefor, we will NEVER in the foreseeable future use Jira Cloud, even if HIPAA compliancy comes to fruition.

[Scion]

I feel like this announcement was not well thought out. If instead, you had begun reaching out to server users and asking why they did not or could not move to the Cloud, and resolved answers to their questions first before sunsetting server products, then you would not have as many upset customers.

This feels like an announcement that should have happened next year, not this one.
You are asking customers to move from a mature and well-documented platform (server) to a brand new but still half-baked one (cloud).

Instead, it very much feels like you thought you knew better than the customer, and did not properly account for your unknown unknowns. Issues that you did not know you did not know.

[Cameron Deatsch]

Scion,

Atlassian has offered Cloud products for over a decade and our current cloud platform has been around for 4 years. We have much detailed analysis of the various reasons customers have not chosen our cloud products (many are mentioned on this thread). The good news is we have eliminated many of these blockers over the last couple of years including improved app availability, performance and scale requirements, security and user management, and much more. When we compare what we have delivered along with our current roadmap (https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/cloud) we believe we can address every concern a customer might have well before the end of server maintenance in 2024.

[Scion]

If Atlassian is truly committed to helping every company move to the cloud, even with issues as I mentioned in my thread responding to "Being Appalled", I would gladly like to get on a Zoom call to discuss how you could take our company there.

[Nuno Gomes]

Repeating what was said in the other thread: you have forced us to begin the migration planning for a Jira server alternative.

These alternatives will include products from your competitors. There's no other way of going about it. We picked Jira Software a few years back precisely because we could run in-house.

Your announcement is worrying and shows Atlassian cannot be trusted.

You have likely lost this one customer but you probably already knew this.

[Cameron Deatsch]

Nuno, I'm sorry to hear this. I believe we can address the many issues you might have over the next few years. However, if you do choose to go an alternative direction would you be willing to have a discussion on the direction you are taking?

[Nuno Gomes]

Thank you for following up, Cameron.

I do not see what else we can contribute. We have been a customer for a few years and the server solution worked very well for us.

By giving your customers three years to transition away from server deployments, you know how impactful your decision was.

At this point, my company has begun a migration plan as you'd expect. We're considering our options and expect to complete the deployment before the end of next year.

In all likelihood, we won't be renewing our subscription next year. There's no point.

[Tom Shaffer]

By giving your customers three years to transition away from server deployments, you know how impactful your decision was.

This is absolutely the 1 thing I'm giving Atlassian credit for in this whole situation when it comes to the bombshell announcement that they gave. They truly are giving us plenty of time to get things figured out and we've seen much worse from other tech companies.

And who knows, maybe in that span of time they'll be able to bring their cloud offerings up to par to actually accommodate for the concerns that their customers have. I mean, I know in my case I just simply can't have my data stored in their cloud, but perhaps they'll gain a few extra customers for at least treating us well on the timeline.

[Nuno Gomes]

They truly are giving us plenty of time to get things figured out

They did but, in our specific case, it matters little. Our Jira deployment is purely for internal use: there's no customer-side visibility, no direct Internet access.

We could run in whatever is the latest version for a long while but we won't. We're again going through the process of choosing candidate alternatives and allocating the development resources to migrate the data, just as we did a few years ago when we deployed Jira.

I doubt we can even get approval to spend money when our subscription is due for renewal next year. Atlassian's over-the-weekend announcement didn't go down very well over here.

Good luck transitioning to the cloud with all its nickel-and-diming joys. 

What a waste.

[Nuno Gomes]

Looks like my posts are being automatically deleted. Not sure what is going on.

Here's what I had written earlier.

They truly are giving us plenty of time to get things figured out

They did but, in our specific case, it matters little. Our Jira deployment is purely for internal use: there's no customer-side visibility, no direct Internet access.

We could run in whatever is the latest version for a long while but we won't. We're again going through the process of choosing candidate alternatives and allocating the development resources to migrate the data, just as we did a few years ago when we deployed Jira.

I doubt we can even get approval to spend money when our subscription is due for renewal next year. Atlassian's over-the-weekend announcement didn't go down very well over here.

Good luck transitioning to the cloud with all its nickel-and-diming joys. 

What a waste.

[Thomas Dörfler]

"And who knows, maybe in that span of time they'll be able to bring their cloud offerings up to par to actually accommodate for the concerns that their customers have. "

I agree with you, three years give us time to choose the direction we will be going. But (apart from the trust level we need to reach again) the cloud version must reach the level of security and compliance already in 2021, otherwise we would not have time to evaluate it properly.

[Tom Shaffer]

Yes, I take it back. You are all correct. It really isn't that much time, especially considering that if you move from the on-prem server option to the Data Center, you lose your perpetual license. Big decision to be made there.

[Leonie]

Do not force us to the Cloud please. We are using Jira & Condluence because we can run it on our own Servers. Our Data must stay on our own Servers behind our Firewall.
Thanks!

[David]

Hi altogether,

I was really disappointed and sad when I read your announcement this weekend.

We are young students and use Jira to manage our projects at school and for our small blog where we have a team of ten people. Additionally, we use Confluence as our wiki and knowledge-share for our projects. The 10-user-license was great, but meanwhile we have some more users, because I could convince more classmates for Jira :)

Happily we were then provided with an academic license from Atlassian this year - big, big thanks for that again, we were so happy!

Your tool is really amazing and there couldn't be any better tool than Jira for us. As we are tech freaks too, Trello would be to boring for us as we like to configure our personal workflows and yes, simply customize everything. But because we are students and a small team at our blog (our hobby project), we can't afford it to pay for Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud licenses.

What would be the pricing for us? At this time, we use Jira with 30 people total (classmates + teachers + team of our blog).

Currently for Jira + Confluence Server: $0/year

Looking at Cloud, this would be for
Jira Cloud: $3,500/year (with academic license, 50% off: $1,750/year)
+ Confluence Cloud: $2,500/year (with academic $1,250/year)
= $6,500/year in total ($3,000/year with academic discount)

This is too much. Please don't misunderstand, we really appreciate your work and would be willing to pay for this a bit, but not that much. But we really don't have that money. With the ads on our blog, we only pay our server costs (where our self-hosted Jira runs on for example).

Either Atlassian reconsiders this decision, otherwise we will have to look for alternatives starting the following months. That would be really sad, as we really like your tools.

I would be happy if you could discuss this decision in your teams at Atlassian and reconsider some things in doing this.

[Cameron Deatsch]

David, thanks for your reply.

We've received a lot of feedback related to our community and academic licensing and are working to come up with programs to address this feedback. 

[Brandon Barlow]

@Cameron Deatsch What are you doing for small classified DoD contractor networks that can never go to the cloud ??? Are you really expecting us to jump from 10/100 users to 500 user DC licenses on 4+ different stacks ?? 

[iS2 Admin]

So, after a >10 years journey with Atlassian server software this is the end. No, it's not enough that you have increased maintenance pricing massively over the past few years. Now you're putting off most european small and mid size copmanies.

As you might have already heard, there are some regulations about privacy and data processing in Europe. After the EU privacy shield was blast away, there is no more reuglar base for processing data outside the EU. This seems not the right moment to enforce customers to migrate their data to unsafe 3rd party countries where your datacenteres are located.

As with german IT security laws there is a wide range of heavily regulated sectors which rely on trustfully data processing. Without the according ISMS certifications (ISO27001, BSI Grundschutz, C5) and an european venue of the contractors there is no way into the cloud for most of them. It is to be expected that German authorities will take harder action in the near future.

Even if there would be a legal and compliant way to move into the cloud, plenty of companies won't give their crown jewels stored in Atlassian tools away. So won't we...

And sorry, DC is not an acceptable offer for us. Costs would be exploding with DC.

For us it's the starting point for moving away from Atlassian. We definitely have to look out for better alternatives.

[Luke Johnson]

We're out unfortunately. I'm going to be planning the exit soon I suppose.

We're a small IT MSP company (less than 50 staff). We've got an internal Confluence server instance (50 user license). A fairly customised wiki with lots of data ingestion from various tools and systems.

However, its my 2000 user Confluence server instance. We run Scroll Viewport and a number of plugins that aren't supported in cloud to deliver a user portal for our end customers. It only happens to be the lifeblood of our customer experience. It's only been live for just over a year. We were half through going live last year when the price hikes were announced and that really pissed off my CEO, because we had to bring forward the purchase a fair way to make the deadline.

I pushed the Confluence route because of our internally familiarity with it of 10+ years and its flexibility to deliver what we needed.

We can't possibly afford the datacenter version, nor do we need HA. Are you or are you not getting rid of DC too? It's the same codebase so why would you get rid of one and not the other?

2020 already hasn't been a great year. Now it looks like 2021 is going to be stressful and expensive while I find another platform and migrate to.

Well done for living up to 'don't f*** the customer'...

[Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California)]

@Luke Johnson  I fully understand your pain. I was in the approval process to achieve the same that you are describing, created a pilot, a proof of concept got pre-approval, and even seamlessly integrated Confluence to a Learning Management System (EduBrite) and of course I was in the middle of writing an article about it.

So, after hundreds of hours in meeting and building the pilot to satisfy requirements, I have to undo to re do it based on cloud limitations. A new journey ahead, of course with a different amount.

Like you, I have a few years using Confluence (am using it since 2009) and I really like it, more with it is combined with K15t products and EduBrite. Best wishes on your new journey with the hope that 2020 is gone soon.

[Luke]

@Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) You got the wrong guy.

[Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California)]

ooops sorry about it ;)

[Luke Johnson]

@Fabian A. Lopez (Community Leader - Argentina, Florida, California) Yep and I think the notion of 'you've got a few years' is rubbish in practice. Who knows when the developers who write the plugins will stop writing bugfixes etc for Server. I can almost guarantee it will be well before 2024.

[Rami Khader]

I am adding my voice to other voices here specially who are in the non-profit sector. 
We have around 350 users currently using Jira and confluence up from 70 two years ago. Most of the users are non-IT one and the majority of use cases are not related to IT. Cloud for now is not an option for security and data privacy reasons so we are having only the data center option. 

I still didn't hit the panic button internally, I will wait until Feb 2021 to see what other options we will going to have and take it from there. 

it is hard to justify for management the increase of the cost from $0 to $xxx without showing them any added values. From their perspective, it is still Jira they don't care if it is data center or hosted on the cloud. 

[ITMAGE]

(I am re-posting our earlier post which seems to have disappeared)

We like many here have been taken completely by surprise with this announcement. Being a small solutions provider, earlier this year we opted for a starter 10 user license for Jira and Confluence, as well as a 3 user for Service Desk and have been greatly using them. Up until this announcement the plan was to purchase a 25 user license for both Confluence and Jira in anticipation of hiring additional staff next year. However this will not occur until August or September 2021 (at the earliest) which is also when we hope to have a new budget in place - note that this is after the Feb 2021 deadline.

I am trying to look at this objectively, but I have to say it's difficult since we feel rather slighted and so that being said here's our take:

• Many of our clients are between 5 and 40 users and can not afford DC nor do they have the desire, ability, nor resources to move to the cloud.
• Large file repository : File repositories are in the hundreds of gigabytes with trade secrets which are not permitted in a cloud environment - just can't do it.
• Contracts : We have contracts to keep data in-house on our servers. Actually one of the very reasons our clients choose us is because they do not trust nor want their data in a cloud environment.
• Automation : We have a considerable amount of custom automation (including in the Postegres instances) which is just not feasible to move to the cloud.
• Security and Stability : We and some of our clients have been burned by cloud providers both in functionality changes/removal (almost invariably cited as 're imagined' or 'improved'), security compromises in one form or another, price increases and so on. Security and stability of the environment are absolutely paramount and so hosting locally ensures these factors.
• Resources: We are working at the very edge of our resources/time trying to meet multiple deadlines; there's just no time to even consider a migration for the foreseeable future (at least 2 years)

Potential Options for Atlassian

We just don't have many ways forward since moving to the cloud is a non-negotiable point. That being the premise, here are some potential avenues Atlassian can take to help us and by the same token demonstrate some good will:

• Allow the continued purchase of 'server' licenses throughout the support period ending in 2024, or at the very least give us at least a year and extend it to 31 Dec 2021.
• Offer existing customers 1/2 price on new server licenses which existing budgets may permit before Feb 2021. For example we would like to upgrade to a 25 user Confluence and 25 user Jira license but can't afford both by Feb 2021. We need to do both or nothing. So perhaps this can manifest itself in the form of various product bundles such as a 25 user Confluence and Jira license bundled together for $3000 - just a thought.
• Create a much lower DC tier and make it PERPETUAL such as 25 user Confluence and Jira, and keep the price the same as it is now for the server products .

I believe the above are all quite reasonable, will demonstrate good will, Atlassian has little to nothing to lose by enacting them (Atlassian should make more money here) and will afford more time for your 'server' customers to get their bearings rather than resulting in upsetting an important segment of your base. I understand that in this business things are constantly in flux and that it is quite challenging to forecast events more than 3 to 5 years, but what Atlassian is doing here by terminating new license purchases so quickly in Feb 2021, is at least in my opinion, wrong and borderline unethical and is leaving us in a real quandary with a feeling of trying to force a hand. I can firmly say we would never do this to our clients and is no way to treat a loyal customer base.

The hard reality here is that if no solution/compromise can be reached, then we and many of our clients will reluctantly be forced to explore other in-house alternatives (even if they are not as good a fit). Lastly I find the timing of this to be possibly one of the worst, as most everyone is struggling with this pandemic. I don't need to say that people are losing their jobs, their lives, businesses are going under and funding is drying up all over. This is,,, well,, it certainly doesn't look good. I grew up believing in integrity and doing the right thing, where a handshake was good enough and so I'm rather disappointed as I expected more.

Thanks.

[Andy Heinzer]

We understand that this is a big decision and might have caught you by surprise. But we’re here to work with you and explain the rationale behind this decision, as well as what we’re doing to support customers like you through the changes.

I want to make sure to address all your comments and feedback, so I’ll try to go through them point by point:

1. End of sale for new licenses: In cloud, we offer free plans that give you exactly what you need to hit the ground running and grow at your own pace. For customers on Server Starter licenses, these are a great option to consider moving to using our free cloud migration assistants and migration resources. I know you’ve expressed you aren’t interested in cloud, but do want to reiterate there’s a no cost option available to you. Cloud also offers monthly or annual billing cycles and per-user pricing, which make it easy for organizations like yours to flex up or down as your organization grows.

2. Large file sizes: In cloud, we offer unlimited storage with our Premium plans.

3. Keeping data in-house: Often, we see customers your size move because of the added security benefit that being in our cloud provides. Our Trust site is a great resource for understanding our security and compliance practices. Can you share with us what exactly your needs are that are preventing you from moving?

4. Automation: Can you share more about your needs, and why it’s not feasible to move to cloud? What types of customer automation have you built?

5. Security and stability: In a survey of recently migrated customers, conducted through Techvalidate, we found that 92% said that security is better or equal in Atlassian cloud, 96% said reliability is better, 82% said performance is better and 97% said innovation was better. I’d encourage you to take a look at some of the benefits of cloud, many of which might address your concerns.

6. Resources and timeline: We’re making server support available for three more years to give you time to review our roadmaps, understand our cloud products, and make the best decision for your organization based on your unique requirements.

7. COVID: We’re committed to helping our customers do their best work during these challenging times. We carefully considered the impact of this announcement during the pandemic, and have plans in place if you need further support - just get in touch. While we’ve long been working hard to make sure cloud is ready for the majority of our customers, we’ve seen COVID-19 accelerate the world’s transition to cloud products. According to our COVID-19 flash survey, 34% of enterprises are spending more on IT resources compared with just 3% that are spending less; 18% of organizations plan to ramp up their spending on external cloud/hosted IT infrastructure. As organizations reconsider their infrastructure strategy, and as teams begin to actively invest in the long term, we see more and more teams move, or plan to move, to the cloud.

Everyone at Atlassian takes our value "Don’t #@!% the customer" very seriously. This is a big change we know but we have never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future. Additionally, we spent a lot of time ensuring that all of our customers have the time to make the decision that is right for them.

While we may not have every answer for you today, 3+ years is a long time, both with the entire industry moving to cloud services and with our investments in these areas. We’ll continue working to address each of your needs to ensure you’re able to make the move as well.

[Neil Gower]

So whilst I understand the need to rationailse the product offering, and I guess many SMB that would use server now use cloud, this is a big issue I think for many SMB that existing in a regulated environment.

We are in no way big enough to be able to justify the cost to move to the DC version, we dont need any features above what server offers us, and we need to remain on-prem due to regulations so where do we go for Jira and Confluence.

I suspect that our only path would be a for Atlassian to offer a very cheap upgrade to Data Center, or we will move away quickly from Confluence to some other wiki option, and Jira close on its heels.

My ask for Atlassian is stand by the many orgs who have used server, and offer us a cheap move to DC, if you said you can move your existing seat to DC for 10% uplift or similar that would be a no brainer.

Otherwise for orgs like mine we will have no choice but to move away. It also seems a little "opportune" and slightly dare I say it profiteering to effectively force people to move, and then at the same time significantly increase prices for the one that people are most likely to move to. Feels unpleasant... Anyway just my view.

[Warren Spencer]

My team is small (relatively), we currently make use of several of the 50-user tier Atlassian server licenses.  For various reasons, we cannot move our data the cloud.  At least, not your cloud, so long as it isn't hosted entirely and redundantly within Canada.  Further, supposing you put the effort in to create a cloud offering which was able to host our data within our country, it would still be a significant undertaking for us to switch to the cloud service as would have to perform a comprehensive security review of your systems.

Compared to your current offerings which allow us to drop your tools on to our secured servers, it is significantly less desirable for us to pursue a cloud offering.

This leaves us with two other alternatives, switch to your data center tools, or retrain the team to use a competitor.  The latter is unfortunate, and why I'm posting at all - retraining is not cheap, nor an efficient use of our time.  The first is prohibitively expensive for a small team of our size.  To switch from our 50 user licenses to 500 user DC licenses would cost us 3 times as much as we currently pay, for little to no perceived benefit.

Please consider our situation as you proceed with your changes.  A possible solution, which would allow you to reduce the number of tools you maintain while still retaining the business of teams around my size who cannot or do not want to switch to the cloud would be to offer more lower-user tiers for your data center licenses.

[Cameron Deatsch]

Warren, if we could guarantee data residency in Canada, would our cloud be something you'd consider?

I know there is effort in migration and retraining of your users but it still would be easier than going to an alternative vendor. We have migration tooling and training materials in place and you can use our cloud for free as you attempt the migration. 

We detail all of this here: https://www.atlassian.com/migration/cloud 

[Warren Spencer]

Hello Cameron,

While the ability to guarantee data residency in Canada would be a start for teams in similar situations to mine, even if you were able to do so I don't believe that my team would make the switch to the Atlassian cloud tools for the following reasons:

• Bamboo: There is no cloud version (and even if there was there's no way we would be able to get the necessary ports/firewalls opened up to allow outside tools to push artifacts into our ecosystem). I have read from other comments in this thread that there is a DC version of it planned, but frankly if we have to host a server to run bamboo I would see little reason to pay hosting fees to run our other tools in the cloud.  I expect that many other teams which leverage bamboo will have similar feelings/face similar obstructions when deciding whether or not to consider the cloud.
• Similar to pretty much every other governmental organization, we have a duty to safeguard the data which we work with; we take this duty very seriously.  While I'm aware that Atlassian is no slouch when it comes to security, the safest way for us to protect our data is to keep it behind our firewalls.  That way, at least, there are fewer points of failure.
• This is similar to the above point, but the fact that Atlassian employees have access to client data at all (even if it's on a 'need to access' basis) pretty much disqualifies any possibility for us to use the Atlassian cloud.

Thank you for the response, while I am disappointed with the direction that Atlassian is taking, it is nice to see the level of engagement with the community.

[David Goldstein]

@Cameron Deatsch In considering future solutions for data residency, would Atlassian also guarantee data residency in Canada (Europe, Brazil, etc) on behalf of 3rd party Cloud apps that customers want installed? How would this work?

Many Atlassian server customers—in considering a move to Atlassian's Cloud—don't initially realize that not only are the feature sets diminished in Cloud apps vs. server apps due to Atlassian framework limitations, but each 3rd party Cloud app actually runs on that vendor's own hardware (typically AWS, Azure, Google)—entirely separate from, and outside of, the Atlassian Cloud.

Cloud customers not only need to rely upon Atlassian trust (and any data residency offered in high-priced, specialty service tiers) but need to separately vet and trust the security model, architecture and business stability of every Cloud app vendor that transmits data to, or stores customer data on, that vendor's own servers.

Is the new Forge Cloud app framework supposed to solve this 3rd party data storage issue? If not, what's Atlassian's roadmap for addressing issues of data residency and related security and privacy compliance for the 3rd party apps customers want installed on Cloud?

[David Willson]

Thanks for posting this, it highlights the complexity around where cloud data lives. Really good to know.

[Stephen Sifers]

Following up on the above;

We understand that this is a big decision, and you’ll need time to evaluate your options. Even with these changes we just announced, you can still continue to use server for the next three years and you have plenty of time to explore your options for the long-term.

I’ll try to touch on all of your points below:

Data residency

We have prioritized two key areas for offering advanced data residency controls. First, we plan to expand coverage for in-scope product data to new geographic locations. We’re currently evaluating Australia, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, and India. Secondly, we plan to work with top Marketplace Partners to support data residency for their app data. 

Can you help us understand the source of your data residency requirements in Canada? For example, PIPEDA does not have a data residency requirement, but certain healthcare data and public sector data may have residency requirements under provincial laws. This will help us better understand the scope of your residency needs.

In addition to those, we’re also looking at options for supporting customers that require our Enterprise cloud plan (which offers data residency) on smaller tiers and plan to provide an update in the near future. If this applies to you, we’ve created a tracking ticket (CLOUD-11064) that you can follow for updates.

Bamboo

You are correct, we will offer Bamboo Data Center in the future with more details coming soon. Alternatively, if you’re able to move your CI/CD to cloud we’d encourage you to consider Bitbucket Pipelines – an integrated CI/CD service, built into Bitbucket Cloud.

Security

As far as security and employee access to customer data, we've outlined our operational practices in our Cloud Security Statement and Privacy Policy. Additionally, we’ve invested heavily in security and compliance and will continue to do so to ensure our platform and practices meet your requirements. You can learn more about our overall approach to security in our Trust Center. 

We understand this is a big change, though we’ve never been shy with our customers about our cloud investments and future. Additionally, we spent a lot of time ensuring that all of our customers have the time to make the decision that is right for them and that we accommodate their various needs over the next 3+ years. Thank you for taking the time to engage with us and share what you need to make cloud a viable option for your organization. If you have more feedback or questions, please contact us so we can help you find the best path forward.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

[Dalectric]

@Stephen Sifers the point about we have 3 years to make a decision leaves out the fact that we are financially penalised the later we make this decsion as the loyalty discounts start to disappear after Feb 2021. This puts huge pressure on us to make a decision before Feb 2021 which is very unreasonable.

[Norbert]

An obvious step regarding the last years...

I'm supporting some customers on running atlassian Software different sizes and constellations. Also I'm buildung Up new environments at the moment. Now I've to tell them that they are no longer free in their decision how to run their environments. And for some reasons cloud solution won't fit their needs. I'm sorry for that, but also atlassian becomes more and more a shareholder company ignoring customer needs.

[Viktor Kuzmychov]

Hi @Cameron Deatsch 

Thank you for your amazing products and the journey me and others were honoured to have with you. My one started ten years ago, hard to believe it's been a decade now. And I hope this is not the end of it. 

I have one question: 

Could you please tell us what was the reason to discontinue your server products? After all there are many customers who are still satisfied having JIRA stand alone server and for you, Atlassian, it shouldn't be a lot of troubles to support it since it's basically Data Center without some features, right? So what exactly makes you do this?

[_A9_ William Kennedy]

Streamlining that development effort presumably allows them to focus on some of the other teenage feature requests and bugs in Cloud.

Take a look at the age and scale of the old bugs.

Things like the inability to rename a Group after creation require fundamentally re-engineering other components: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-1391

Does that imply they will they fix Cloud? Probably not. https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ID-6677

[Cameron Deatsch]

Viktor, thanks for your decade of involvement in the Atlassian community. I've only been here for 8 years and before my current role, I actually managed the R&D teams for Server and Data Center.

Our CEO Scott goes into detail on the reasons behind this decision in this post

here: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/journey-to-cloud

[Steve Kipping]

Maybe I've missed it but I don't see a good explanation for why Server is being discontinued in that post.

[Viktor Kuzmychov]

TBH I don't see a good explanation in that post either. 

The least you could do in this case is lock Data Center license to one node only and keep the same price Server has now adding lower user tiers licenses.

Boom and you don't get to support another product, you keep your clients happy, you get to keep you clients. 

But you would do that only if you would care about your customers. 

[Metin Savignano]

Or just leave the product as it is, and add lower tiers with limited or no support like the server starter tier. One product, no additional hassle, customers kept.

[Tom Shaffer]

It's always going to be the things they don't say which is the most telling: $ $ $

Those of us on servers aren't paying as much as those in the cloud. They've probably figured that for every XX people who leave, the 1 person who will bite the bullet and move to cloud will make up for that revenue lost. And they won't have to deal with as many pesky "penny pinchers," as their investors probably think that's only why we've stayed on the server plans.

To me, the truly disparaging part of all this is how they're trying to clink pints with us and trying really hard to get us to say - "WOW! You guys were right all along! The cloud is SO MUCH better than my on-prem server. All these years I was so wrong about the cloud. Thank you for showing me the light, Atlassian!" But only a small handful of users here have done it and then again they responded so quickly after the creation of this thread that I can't help but think fanboyism may be at play.*

All I'm seeing right now are the inherent limitations and a LOT of promises and coming soons™ for very real concerns when moving to the cloud. They're asking us to trust them - and in many cases put our own jobs, our company's reputation, and our customer's privacy at a larger risk than we had before because ... ($ $ $) ... reasons?

*Previous to this, I would have called myself an Atlassian fanboy because they really do make great products and I thought their licensing policies were more than fair. But I certainly can't call myself that now in any capacity. More than anything, that makes me sad.

[Ralph Olsson]

As Tom Shaffer says, it feels like they've done their sums and decided to forge ahead. For a company the size of mine DC or Cloud cost around 4 times as much as Server, so they only need 1 in 4 companies like mine to decide to stay in order to break even. The other 3 in 4 of us don't matter, as the dismissal of our concerns here demonstrates.

[a.stucki@solcept.ch]

@Cameron DeatschI am not so convinced by what your CEO tells us lowly customers, what convinces me more is this: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3623014-atlassian-shares-climb-after-announcing-focus-on-cloud-ending-server-products .

This is maybe a better guidance fo our decisions wrt. Atlassian customer centricity in the near future?!?

Have you read "Skin in the Game" by Taleb -> go by what they do, not what they tell...

[Julius Zatroch]

Yes, 

We are desperatelly waiting for Q1 2021 shareholder letter today.....

[Scion]

As a shareholder I voted not to re-elect any of the board members because of this. I hoped that at least one of them could have made some sort of statement.

[Billy Poggi AUG NOVA_ DC]

This is a really big deal.  I'm torn, but I like it.  
I'm looking forward to the great ways we can be successful with government requirements without having to scale all the way up to data center.  

We'll find a way! 

[Cameron Deatsch]

Thanks Billy. I believe you're based in the US and the teams are working like hell to get our products Fedramp certified. You may have seen that we just launched Trello Fedramp certification. You can track our roadmap in this area here: https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/cloud?enterprise=security

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Hi! 

Any plans for the DC make a tier for 250 users ?

[Thomas Dörfler]

Looking again at this discussion thread, it's 4 weeks old now. Many users have expressed their anger, some users have expressed their specific concerns, why they can't migrate to cloud.

Within these four weeks, the only substantial answer (IMHO) from atlassian was "cloud is the future". It's a cool statement from a cool company. But unfortunately, IMHO its cool air and nothing else.

Yes, cloud will bring some improvements, but at the price of too many disadvantages. Many users have mentioned this. Atlassian promised to listen. But obviously Atlassian doesn't care.

I do. And therefore we will check our existing licenses to last long enough to comfortably migrate. Not to Atlassians cloud but to a yet to find alternative that understands our requirements. And not only understands, but also cares.

See you on a different platform!

[Tom Shaffer]

Atlassian promised to listen.

Yeah, that's why I stopped looking at these threads. Their version of listening is, "Oh, you can't go on the cloud because of compliance reasons? Well then go to our overpriced Data Center offering which gives you nothing more than the on-premises server currently does. You currently have a 10 user license? Perfect, our minimum 500 user license is tailored just for YOU!"

And, "That's on our roadmap (but ignore the thousands of opened tickets on things we've never resolved over the years - we're "sharpening" our focus to do better)."

Or, "You just aren't ready to go on the cloud yet. But here's why you're wrong..."

And my favorite, "                                                               ." (As in, we don't have a talking point to answer that question and you don't have enough licenses to make it worth our time to even respond to you)

[Andrew Laden]

I filled out the form for the "Server Champions" But I don't think they liked what I had to say. So I haven't gotten a response yet. The name "Server Champions" is a bit of marketing misdirection.

A "Server Champion" would be someone who want to champion the cause of keeping the on-prem jira product.  All the Server champions are the people on this threat who are explaining why they cant go to cloud or don't want to.

What Atlassian is looking for is not "Server Champions" but "Ex-Server Cloud Champions" People who are or had been on server to to provide feedback on what cloud needs to make it more palatable for existing server champions to want to give up their on-prem installations and migrate to cloud.

Its fine that you want a group for that. Get your customers to do your marketing and all. But don't go and name it "Server Champions" as that is just an insult those of us who have been championing the Atlassian product suite on prem for years and now are feeling completely betrayed.

[Alex Janes]

Can confirm, I also have not heard anything from the Server Champions group.

I also agree, calling it Server Champions is a bit confusing, as server is going away, and we can't champion it anymore. Hopefully it isn't just a group for cloud improvement, and will actually be a group to gather feedback about how to handle the transition to BOTH data center and cloud.

[gzgenm]

I'll tell you how to handle the transition to DC or cloud:

pay twice more than you paid for server (and pay it every year from now) for DC

pay 3x more than you paid for server, get 3x less than you had (give up all the features and apps and works and integrations and workflows etc etc) and start over from scratch for CLOUD

Apart from this - we're all fine. thank you.

[Alex Janes]

@gzgenm What would you like to see from Atlassian? Is there a solution you could propose?

[gzgenm]

at very least I expected them to set a more reasonable date for the selling deadline.

It's obvious, a community reaction is sooo predictable. And they did it anyway.

I want them to stop bullshiting me about this and that, because we all know that the only reason for them to do it is money. And they don't have a product to justify that (3x+) price. Just don't have it. Okay, you're the boss, just tell us "sorry guys, we don't have any other options and want you to pay upfront for features we maybe delivering in Q4 2021 or 2022 or maybe not" That the honesty I expect from one of the greatest company I've known.

All the solutions had been mentioned here more than once and all the answers were given.

I don't feel there's the need to repeat it again and again giving them more chances to tell you about roadmap, promises and things. They know what they're doing and not going to give a hand to noone.

[Alex Janes]

@gzgenm I recommend filing a support ticket to get a lot of your questions answered, then come back here and post any remaining concerns.

I'm not saying they will have the answers you like. But, unfortunately, that is the best way to get a response from them.

Also, I recommend sending your concerns to the founders. https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/contact-ceos

Make it heard by the decision makers what your concerns are.

[ITMAGE]

A few ideas have been floated around including the below. While all would be nice to have, for us and our clients items 1 and 2 would be extremely helpful since there is just no time to budget anything even remotely close to the Datacenter costs as they exist today:

1. Extend the deadline to 31 Dec 2021 to purchase additional server licenses
2. Provide 'bundle packages' now, whereby a 25 (and 50 user) Confluence/Jira combo can be purchased for less than the individual costs.
3. Provide reasonable Datacenter tiers (at a reasonable cost) as follows: 25, 50, 100
4. Provide a perpetual license option (at a reasonable cost) at least for for possible new Datacenter tiers of 25, 50 and 100 user licenses.

Many of us here simply can't migrate to the cloud for a variety of reasons (in our case long term contractual and other) and so it would be nice if Atlassian could help us out so that we may continue operating in the same manner we have been.

Yes, it is understood that the licenses we currently have will continue to function in perpetuity, but some of us are growing and project a need for 25 or 50 user licenses in the third or fourth quarter of 2021. However at present there is simply is no money to buy what's needed now and so we are stuck. Budgets won't be created and moneys allocated until after Feb 2021 and that's the problem.

If Atlassian could at least address items 1 and 2 above then that would be great, but if they are holding out with hopes we will move to the cloud, then it just can't happen unfortunately.

[David Willson]

I haven't heard back on the server champion either form either.  Not sure what the next steps there would be. But as far as I know we are all still waiting to see what the server champion group will entail.

[Monique vdB]

@David Willson , @Alex Janes , @gzgenm the Server Champion groups are still in progress, we ran into some technical issues in setting them up and need to make sure they work well, so you have a good experience. @Mandy Ross is helping with these and may have some more info so I am mentioning her just in case. 

[Alex Janes]

Thank you @Monique vdB 

I look forward to the next update on this.

[David Willson]

Right on! Thanks :)

[David Willson]

@Andrew Laden- got the email today about the groups, your statement is accurate "What Atlassian is looking for is not "Server Champions" but "Ex-Server Cloud Champions.

Looks like DC is getting no love.

[Andrew Laden]

I also agree that this is a horrible decision by Atlassian. They are 100% *^%$*&^ the customer.

As for Atlassian telling us that we can trust them with our data. I am living proof that we cant. I was working from a company that was using atlassian's cloud product.  Atlassian Cloud had a storage failure. They had no working backups. They 100% lost all our data. We had to use emails to try to reconstruct tickets, and we lost source code that we never recovered. 

My first major project was to get us off cloud and onto on-prem. and I have never looked back.

So no, I don't trust Atlassian with our data, and I never will.

[Dalectric]

This is a worrying story, and highlights the risk of putting your data in another company's hands.

[David Holshouser]

I've read many but not all of the above comments.

For my company this isn't about compliance and it isn't something you can sweep away with all the cloud marketing in the world.

I'm required by customer and contract to provide configuration management to small teams in air-gapped networks in secure environments, with long term support (10 yrs).

Your offerings simply don't support a model of small teams in secure environments.

I realize most of my companies programs will be supported by DC (cloud isn't even a consideration due to the high security and criticality of our programs), but I have already received guidance to start the trade process for an alternative to Atlassian.

I don't think your very flattering letter provides any sense of relief to me after all the time I've put in fighting for your products. I've lost a considerable amount of trust and respect from my corporate staff due to this transition. Thank you but no thank you.

[Tom Shaffer]

I've lost a considerable amount of trust and respect from my corporate staff due to this transition.

Yup. A lot of us face this. And here Atlassian continues to degrade us by telling us we'll be moving to their cloud "soon" and we're just "not ready" for it... blah blah blah.

But in reality most of us can't just change over to something else in a small window of time and certainly can't put our trust in a company who seems to be ignoring questions in regards to very glaring shortcomings. On top of that, there's still a large portion of customers who simply chose the server offerings because they just can't go to the cloud. Period. No more discussion, they just can't go to it. But according to Atlassian, we just don't know what the cloud is...

I wouldn't put my own professional reputation on the line with a company who pulls that. And I'm not going to.

[David Willson]

Re posting to this thread so that others here could see my message to @Cameron Deatsch 

---Post

Hey @Cameron Deatsch 

Thanks for checking out our website.

Yep we are in the cloud business and I do think that cloud is the direction that the majority of companies and governments are going.

Professionally, we have strict requirements around where data can live. In the cloud, answering the question 'where does the data live?" becomes much more complicated then with on-prem solutions. Specifically with Atlassian, data can be in Atlassian's cloud, or stored in vendor clouds depending on the apps you buy from the marketplace.

The commitment that Atlassian is moving to cloud is so clear, from the investor letter we know how big the forgotten middle is 30 000, ~16% and the fact that 75% of Atlassian customers have some sort of on prem. The letter also says that Atlassian now has a billion dollar loan, to continue the cloud train. Cloud is the future for Atlassian it has the resources are there to make it happen and underlying all of that is the culture to support the transition. Cloud is where Atlassian is going, and that makes so much sense to me.

I think it would have been a different story if Atlassian had announced that all on prem was going to the cloud; Server + Datacenter. At least then it would make sense. My guess is that the 80/20 rule applies, and that data center customers generate significant revenue so an abrupt shift of DC to the cloud would be financially apocalyptic.

Personally, my main challenge isn't the simple question of what is preventing us to going to the cloud, its the cognitive dissonance that comes with the abrupt decision to discontinue server, mandate cloud, and provide no cost effective data center option.

1) Atlassian has said for years 'can't do it all' that’s why there is a marketplace and a ecosystem of people who can make the features that won't get done by Atlassian. Now the message is 'we have time and we can do it all for you in the cloud'.
2) Atlassian is a large proponent of Agile, and agile isn't about the big bang its about the gradual organic growth. This is a big bang approach feels more like waterfall then Agile to me.
3) Atlassian is now asking for Trust to go to cloud, immediately after breaking it by signaling that they aren’t willing to help the forgotten middle get with an affordable DC option.

It feels like this:

Surely for the 30 000 of the forgotten middle an affordable data center tier could be created. Doesn't it just make sense to keep customers? Don't the researchers say its something like 5x-7x more expensive to get new customers over keeping existing ones? Atlassian knows that the forgotten middle are some of the most loyal and the first to advocate for Atlassian products. So why forget them?

Would offering the forgotten middle an affordable option, rewarding them for their patronage, loyalty and support that has allowed Atlassian grow to where it is today be so bad?

@Cameron Deatsch  could you send my letter to the founders? I would love them to read it.

Please imagine you are in the forgotten middle, and what this would feel like.

Ref: Shareholder letter - https://s2.q4cdn.com/141359120/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/TEAM-Q1-2021-Shareholder-Letter.pdf

Ref: My Letter - https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/An-Open-Letter-Atlassian-s-Forgotten-Middle-re-The/ba-p/1510036

[Luke Johnson]

@David Willson seems like Atlassian have disappeared from or given up on this thread.

[Tom Shaffer]

They just started another thread, same as the old thread...