Why did you choose enterprise over cloud

[Brant Schroeder]

Why are you running enterprise over cloud?  Is it due to cost, security, compliance, etc.  We are looking at both options now and are wondering why individuals are using enterprise over cloud.

[Lawrence Smith]

For my company it was because most of the plugins we needed weren't supported in Cloud at the time.

[Brant Schroeder]

Thanks

[Lawrence Smith]

We also integrated Jira into a couple of our internal applications which is easy from a networking and security aspect when the instance is on premises.

It would have been a nightmare to try and replicate the same functionality on a Cloud instance - and that's if it was even possible.

[jairo cabello]

It's a matter of scalability (of company processes) and adaptation.

If your company can adapt to the way Atlassian hopes you'll use the tools, cloud is the way to go.

But in many cases, we have to adapt the tools to processes that already exist. In this situation, the fact that enterprise has a really powerful API allows for a really big amount of personalization that cloud can't provide, at least now.

[Chamara]

We have few reasons to stay in enterprise;

1. Most of the plugins we use are not cloud compatible yet

2. We have number of in-house developed plugins which can not be used in cloud

3. Database access- number of back-end reports are generated by accessing DB. this is not possible in cloud

4. It is difficult to maintain Integration with internal applications

5. System file modification is not possible where we have applied few hacks to  overcome some limitations in apps

This may change in the future with  the development of Atlassian Cloud,

[Benjamin]

In advance: we have been using Jira for 14 years now. Confluence for like 7-8 years. Both is running on-premise. A few years ago Atlassian Cloud offerings just didn't scale for bigger companies, so we didn'T have much of a decision process when we set them up. 

So my perspective is currently "Why not switch to the Cloud?". I will split this into "general hassle when moving to another system" on the one hand and to "Cloud/DC specific points" on the other.

Cloud/DC specific points and why we won't move to the Cloud

• In Cloud I have no option to delay an update if Atlassian should decide to throw unready stuff at me. In my biased completly personal perspective the new Jira issue view in Cloud is a great example.
  For us Jira is a support tool. It is there and it has to work. While the new view will likely be an exciting piece of work when it's done, I fear that I have to train users after every iterational improvement of it. In DC I can delay such an update for a few months and hopefully work with a more mature version.
• We can rollback our database to the minute. If my system breaks at 5:30, I can roll back to 5:29 and start from there. To my information, rollbacks of your system can only be done on a daily base. Official statement by Atlassian about their cloud offering "Atlassian cloud sites don't support the use of backup data to roll back changes." (see here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/data-storage-faq-873871367.html)
• While there's smaller plans like standard,in enterprise environments you will have to use the higher tiers. Not just because of the storage limits. See below. 
• A public on-premise Jira (Server/DC)  instance can integrate with cloud services as well as with our on-prem services. Some of them have a strict policy of getting no direct connections to the Internet.
• We once merged two Jira instances with some specific Add-Ons with lots of AO tables into one. It cost us a fortune. Since these Add-Ons have no equivalent in the Cloud, we'd have to merge all those tickets.
• Cloud is way more expensive.
• Our user base is not Atlassian internal. To use the user directories that our dev tool chain uses to reuse groups and such, I have to pay even more for Jira access and add our 2FA to it as well as the user directories.
• In Jira Cloud I can pay (a lot) extra to have my stuff run in Europe. But my user data is still transferred into other regions when using Atlassian access (simple AWS plan, if I am correct) or even Bitbucket (Bitbucket cloud infrastructure is hosted with NTT in the US at the Ashburn, VA and Santa Clara, CA locations.). Same goes for the data of the Apps, cached content, Confluence permission data and so on. See here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/manage-data-residency-976763149.html

General hassle when moving to a new system

• All links in other systems to our instance would not work anymore and would have to be set up again. 
• There's a lot of integrations in our own ecosystem. Even if we opened up all of those by pinching holes into our firewalls, we'd have to rewrite them all. 

All in all

Don't get me wrong. I am not an Anti-Cloud guy. We have a hybrid system in our company. But I can use it all if I am running on-prem. We love to use the workflow engine in Jira. It's incredibly flexible and has an API that just lacks a few minor things. This is why we use it to drive processes that are bound to be INSIDE our company. And we have a complete infrastructure that enables us to host services for the public. What Atlassian can offer us is just a step back in various ways.

A look into the future

Atlassians statement that "if you are not ready to move to the Cloud, yet, you can go for DC" makes me guess that they will be Cloud-only in the coming years. If not, then this was not a smart thing to tell your customers. 
My guess would be that in that case, we will keep using Confluence in Cloud since I don't see any solution on the market that is as mature and feature rich as Confluence.

But we'll most likely move away from Bitbucket if it's Cloud-only and will compare Jira Cloud to other tools, since we have to rewrite most of our integrations anyway. After a first rough check, moving Jira to the Cloud is about as much hassle as moving a part of our Jira data to another product on the market, leaving our Jira Server/DC instance for legacy projects until it dies. So I'll sure have to make comparisons there.

From a business view ..

and based on the statement by Atlassian, I would reccomend strongly to take a look at the risk.  If you set up an enterprise system to use a DC product. According to the aforementioned statement and seeing that they already discontinue the Server licenses there is a good chance that you will face a major migration to Cloud in a couple of years. Either Cloud is for you or you will have to look around for other vendors.

[Chamara]

Great explanation !

Atlassians statement that "if you are not ready to move to the Cloud, yet, you can go for DC" makes me guess that they will be Cloud-only in the coming year.

I'm under the same impression.

[Brant Schroeder]

Thanks for the insights, greatly appreciated.