Introducing Enterprise releases for Jira Software and Confluence

[#1]

At Atlassian, we've been shipping Server product releases to customers for a long time. At each step of our journey, we've listened to your feedback on our releases and worked to incorporate that knowledge into a release structure that works better for you. Today, we're excited to share an update that we expect will help better plan your upgrades and meet the needs of your users. 

Starting today, we are introducing the concept of Enterprise releases for JIRA Software and Confluence Server and Data Center products. The goal is to allow you to remain on a feature release (e.g. Jira Software 7.6) that you know will get critical bug fixes without requiring you to upgrade to the latest feature release. 

Enterprise releases will receive additional support and documentation from the Atlassian team. Each Enterprise release will include:

• Back-ported security bugs as defined in our security bug fix policy.
• Any bugs that we deem critical and that we would normally fix in the next bug fix release of the product. These will generally be issues relating to stability, data integrity, or critical performance issues with a specific focus on regressions where core product functionality breaks. 
• A combined change log from the last Enterprise release of the product so you can more easily understand what new capabilities have been introduced.
• Scale and performance benchmarks relative to the prior Enterprise release of the product.

For more information on how Enterprise releases will work, take a look at the full blog post. Questions or comments? Leave them here and let us know what you think.

[Jonathan Chatwin]

FYI: Link to blog post above doesn't work. 

[Shana Rusonis]

@Jonathan Chatwin Thank you for flagging! The link to the blog above is now working.

[Brian Hill]

Thanks for this very much needed option. Not all clients have the capacity to keep pace with a fast + frequent release tempo, especially those with complex implementations. It's several years later than my clients would like, but at least it's now signaled as an intent.

[Keshav Puttaswamy]

Thanks Brian for the feedback.

[James Brown]

What is the plan for going to an Enterprise Release schedule for Bitbucket, Bamboo, Crowd?

[Karsten Janus]

The decision to announce Enterprise releases is highly appreciated. I can see that Confluence 6.6 has been announced, but what about Jira 7.6? Do you have any time line for when it will be announced as Enterprise release?

[Shana Rusonis]

@Karsten Janus thanks for checking in. We are hoping to officially certify Jira Software 7.6 as an Enterprise release in the next few weeks. We will be notifying customers and updating documentation at that time.

[banos solomou]

Where to you publish enterprise release versions other than https://www.atlassian.com/blog/enterprise/introducing-enterprise-releases please?

[Adam Barnes]

See Jira Software 7.6 release notes and Confluence 6.6 release notes for all the updates on the latest bugfix releases

[Ronnie Volkmar]

Here is the Service desk version of that:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicedesk/jira-service-desk-3-9-x-release-notes-939711776.html

[Jason Kemp]

How are the enterprise releases selected? When is that decision made? Will we know ahead of a release that, say, JIRA 7.12 will be the next new Enterprise release so that users can plan for it and wait for it to be released before planning an upgrade process?

[Keshav Puttaswamy]

@Jason Kemp, thanks for your questions. We've just posted a Frequently asked questions on Enterprise releases. Let us know this answers your questions and if you need any further clarification.

[Starkey DevOps]

@Keshav Puttaswamy, I was pointed to this page from the support folks.  I was wondering, are you guys going to be back porting MS SQL 2016 support into the current enterprise version? If not, what will be the next enterprise version to support MS SQL 2016 and around when might it be available?

[44040122]

Can anyone help me to understand more on enterprise release versions such as Confluence 6.6 and Jira 7.6 are the enterprise version, so to have a most stable version, which one I should go with ? Confluence 6.6 (feature version) or Confluence 6.6.6(as bug fix )?

A simple worded explanation would be helpful.

[James Brown]

We recently upgraded JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo, and Crowd. We also discovered some bugs that we did not know of or the impact they would have. Do you plan on addressing open bugs against releases so that we can cherry pick the release we upgrade to without the big surprise of bugs post upgrade?

[Shana Rusonis]

@44040122 We recommend you upgrade to the latest bug fix version within an Enterprise release version - so Confluence 6.6.6, not Confluence 6.6.0. The 6.6.6 version will have the latest bug fixes and stability improvements.