🏰 Enterprises... Are You Still Hesitant About Cloud?

[#1]

Despite lower IT workloads, cost savings, and greater agility, when it comes to Cloud there are still some myths surrounding performance, data management, security, compliance, and more. And these are then turned into blockers for your organization looking to make the move.

But why? Let's take a deeper look, consider the business benefits of migrating and operating in the Cloud and help organizations become less clouded around cloud. 

🔎 Firstly, the facts 

Making the move to Cloud enables your business to enjoy the benefits much earlier than enterprises that hesitate. Cloud services are more secure, sustainable, agile, and cost-effective than ever before, and companies are finding fewer reasons to stay on-premises (also known as ‘on-prem’). In fact, 9 out of 10 new Atlassian customers choose cloud over on-prem (source: Atlassian). Even so-called “traditionalists” are making the move, or risk falling behind.

The reason for this lies in the top five reasons people make the switch. Cloud empowers businesses to:

• Scale faster and more affordably
• Increase profits and lower costs
• Improve speed and performance
• Increase team productivity
• Future-proof against competitive forces

⚖️ Scalability

This topic ranks highly on the agenda because no matter what size our businesses are today, most of us are planning to grow. We all want to serve more customers, solve more customer problems, and increase profits along the way. Take a look, for example, at all the daily company announcements and success stories showing that goals have been exceeded by 200%, or that the uptake of a particular product has doubled or quadrupled in the last semester.

Scaling is, for many of us, constantly top of mind. But when we picture rapid growth, we must not forget the role of scalable technology. You need technology to support your company’s ambitions, or otherwise face major incidents, unhappy customers, and stressed-out teams.

Scalability is the availability of computing power, server space, and resources to grow (or shrink) with your business needs. If your computing power has to increase to meet peak demand, your server capacity must be capable of scaling up to meet those needs. If your computing power needs to drop from, say, 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. local time, you will need your servers to scale down and use fewer resources (and cost you less money) during those slower hours.

In this respect, Cloud technology makes scaling faster, smarter, and more affordable than on-prem servers. It provides a flexible, responsive technology stack with no lengthy, expensive or manual upgrades required.

Need end-to-end help with implementing Atlassian environments in the cloud? To scale effectively in the cloud, you need the right technology. But you also need the right processes, teams, and company culture, which is why Atlassian Cloud Specialized Partners are devoted to the challenges and best practices for rapid growth in the cloud.

🦺 Keep it safe

Many ‘on-prem’ businesses can be hesitant, at first, to move to Cloud. Among the first concerns, they’ll cite “security”. But here’s some good news: 94% of businesses surveyed said security got better for them after moving to the Cloud.

The fear around security risks is simply “out of date”.

How does Cloud keep you secure as you scale? The answer lies with rigorous security testing, disaster recovery plans, and encryption in transit and at rest, among other best practices. Not to mention that Cloud secures systems at the individual user level, not just upon first entry into your system. This reduces the security risk of a fast-growing team by securing how people log in, who has access to what, and when that access expires.

Good cloud systems also take a zero-trust approach to security, which means security checks at every endpoint and for every user in the company. The reason for a zero-trust approach is simple: On-prem servers are typically protected by a company-wide VPN. If an attacker can get into the VPN, it’s panic time, because now they have access to everything. Every system. Every tool. All your stored data. Similarly, if every user has access to the same level of security, an attacker only needs to hack one login to wreak havoc.

With cloud systems, instead of a single moat around your system, security takes the form of unique logins and frequent checkpoints where systems check identity and device credentials and act as security gates between each tool. Each tool is its own secure island and access to a single one doesn’t automatically give access to the others.

Each user login has its own permissions and doesn’t grant access to every part of your system (source: Atlassian). This is how we make sure a vulnerability in one system or one login doesn’t automatically endanger any other, which is probably why the vast majority of businesses report improved security and peace of mind when they migrate to Cloud.

Remember, though... The Clock is Ticking (3 Reasons to Start the Migration Conversation). February 2024 is looming and if you want to move at the pace of change, it's best to start discussing it internally sooner rather than later.

But if you feel it's a bigger conversation to be had, why not check out the Atlassian Partner Directory to find a local, Cloud Specialized Partner that can answer the bigger questions on your mind. 

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💭 Tell us, what's your hesitant around Cloud? There's a whole Community ready to help you through your concerns and share their own experiences... let's keep talking and drop a message below 👇

[GBE]

> what's your hesitant around Cloud? 

Loss of functionality? 

Some SaaS provider does not provide feature parity with their OnPrem product.
Some customization we were able to make on prem (ex. building custom reporting using the database) are no longer possible (because of a legitimate interest of the provider not to share sensitive access which may impact the stability of the whole system).

Some personalization are not possible neither, and moving to cloud would greatly affect the perception of our end-users/partners/customers (ex. inability to keep the same URL, which would affect our community, inability to use standard SEO best practice that are not yet available).

I believe those are the major reasons that explain in company like ours why there is a significant fear/push back from the business team. From the Finance team, moving to a subscription only also means a bigger vendor lock-in.  

> 9 out of 10 new Atlassian customers choose cloud over on-prem
Indeed, the above reasons would not apply to new customers, but would apply to the existing customer base. 

[Scion]

> what's your hesitant around Cloud? 

Atlassian, you literally do not want our business on your cloud.

We have asked if we would be able to migrate to the cloud only to be told:

I have raised your inquiries with our Legal Team for more clarity. The content you have described is not available to be uploaded to our Cloud products as it is in violation in that it is considered pornographic.

I apologize, but our Cloud option will not be available as an option to satisfy your needs. 

Your AUP has not changed since then. The only thing preventing us from begrudgingly shelling over thousands of additional dollars is you.

[vikram]

Good information

thanks for sharing, 

As said, Few of the futionalities or not provided in Cloud whereas they are available in On Premise.

I am from Health Care Organization, we are using cloud for our Atlassian tools. 

Vikram P 

[Olivier Voortman]

Hello!

Cloud is great when you can keep good branding.

• Tell us, what's your hesitant around Cloud? 

This issue still not being resolved: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CLOUD-6999

Regards,

Olivier

[hbunjes]

I agree with Olivier and https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CLOUD-6999

I’m wondering how the overall architecture of the Cloud system is, that such a change takes more than 10 years and is still not finished. Maybe missing interest in customer needs or issues in the technical platform. Both don’t make feeling good moving to Atlassian cloud…

[Miguel Prudente]

This -> https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CLOUD-6999

I'm more likely to move away from Atlassian just because of it.

[Benjamin Horst]

Hello,

your article started promising by mentioning "data management, security, compliance," 

But you only addressed security there. Can you elaborate around data management and compliance?

I addressed these two points in a reply to this post a while ago. And to my knowledge

• my User account information data is still not able to be pinned to a region. At least if I want to force 2FA for my users and need to use Atlassian access
• I still can't roll back changes like overwritten projects, bulk deleted issues and such

I am aware that most other Cloud offerings do not address the second point either.  But would have been nice to hear good news on that one. 

[John Dunkelberg]

There are a list of capabilities that Cloud doesn't have which we're tracking and will continue to discuss with Atlassian staff.  Our biggest barrier is the need to rewrite all of our in-house integrations to Forge.  We're currently working with Atlassian on what (if any) enhancements we'll need to wait on before Forge meets our needs.

An example related to @Benjamin Horst's data management point, we note this from the Atlassian Cloud comparison as well: "In Cloud, it’s not possible to archive individual issues. When you migrate your issues from Server or Data Center, any previously archived issues will be unarchived. It is possible to archive entire projects on selected Jira Cloud plans."

We will continue to investigate Cloud on a regular basis to see if it's capable of meeting our Enterprise needs, but we also can't invest too much in constantly checking in with Atlassian either.  Currently we plan to check in once a year to see how things are matching up.

[Adrian Moerchen]

> 9 out of 10 new Atlassian customers choose cloud over on-prem

Because your whole marketing strategy is build on this. It makes it hard for new customers to not choose cloud.

From what I experience, existing custom just want to stay on server... for reasons.

> Increase profits and lower costs

You know this is wrong… Instead of consolidating Server and DC software and pricing to something competitive… Atlassian just forces everyone to DC with extremely increased pricing. Atlassian just lets cloud look cheaper, but it isn't… Show me one company needing a full time administrator only managing Atlassian products all day…

There are other problems with cloud too, ... i.e. you still need people for administrative tasks or with “always up to date”, custom apps have to be maintained “always” too… else they might just break from one day to another.

[Andrew Laden]

Sooooooo many reasons why I don't want to move my Atlassian applications to Atlassian's cloud.

1. Lack of direct access to the database
2. Integration with on-prem proprietary systems that are not cloud accessible
3. Lack of ownership of my own data and backups (Remember last time Atlassian Cloud lost customer data.)
4. Risk of getting shut off due to billing issues.
5. Risk of the UI changing in unacceptable ways with no recourse. (How many people complained about the new issue view not having feature parity, yet you forced it on everyone anyway)
6. LACK of stability. I see many more people complaining about stability and access problems in the cloud instances then I do in On-Prem. And if you have a problem in the cloud, you have absolutely nothing you can do about it except sit back and wait. Not something I want in an enterprise solution. I want control. The cloud gives me none.
7. Lack of feature parity (Priority Schemes anyone?)

The ONLY reason the majority of your current on-prem customers are moving to cloud is you gave them NO CHOICE with your obnoxious pricing hike and tier minimums to Data Center. Give data center the same tiers and similar pricing to server, and see how many of your customers willing move to cloud.

The main reason NEW customers chose cloud, is that you don't have a low cost of entry to the on-prem products.

To your points

1: Scalability. Guess what, as an end user I have no control over my instance. I cant add/remove resources to optimize costs. The cost is per user, and I cant turn off users overnight to save money. So how is Atlassian cloud giving me scalability?

2: Keep it safe. Guess what, My Behind the firewall on-prem instance is much safer then your cloud instance by virtue of the fact that it cant be reached by outsiders at all. While I still have to patch to protect against the inside attacker, it is less likely to be attacked. Oh, and guess what, I can test patches and patch on my schedule instead of yours. And roll back if it break something on my schedule.

9 out of 10 customers chose cloud because they cant afford to go on prem, not because on prem is inherently more expensive, but you chose to price your product to make on prem more expensive to small customers. 

Please, prove me wrong. Bring back a lower price point for on prem, and see how many people chose on prem over cloud when the costs are really equal. 

Now to be fair, if you are talking cloud in general, then yes, I could easily see myself buying some cycles on AWS or Azure, spinning up my own cloud servers, and installing DataCenter on there. Guess what, I get the benefits of Scalabilty, boosted security ,etc. All while maintaining at least some control. (yes there have been cloud vendor outages, but I can plan for that and have things I can do to mitigate.) But that isn't what you are calling cloud.

[Reese]

What a load of whaffle, regurgitated trope. A shill for Atlassian Cloud.