An update on your top questions and concerns about our recent announcement

[Cameron Deatsch]

As a follow-up to our announcement, I wanted to respond to the feedback many of you have provided and answer a few of the top questions you’ve been asking.

Specifically, this post will cover:

• The timeline of changes, and how long you have to plan

• Your feedback on compliance and data residency requirements

• Our plans for the future of Data Center (rest assured, it’s bright)

• Non-profit customers' need for Data Center Community subscriptions

Before we dive into the details, again, I want to thank all of you for your engagement with us. I understand these changes are disruptive and we will continue to listen to your feedback and help you navigate these changes. We will continue to answer any questions you have here in our community, or you can contact us directly.

When are the changes you announced effective?

One of the areas we’ve received the most questions about is when each of the changes we introduced goes into effect. First, I want to reassure you that you don’t need to make a decision or migrate immediately. With more than three years of server support, you have time to make the best decision based on your requirements and our roadmap while continuing to use our server products. Our roadmap will continue to evolve as we hear your feedback. We’ve also heard your need for more specific and actionable timeframes and guidance on when is the right time to move, and are working to address this.

Below is the timeline for the rest of the changes we announced. For more information on the specifics of these changes, visit our website.

As you navigate these changes and evaluate your options over the next three years, we’ve built and will continue to develop new resources to help you make the best decision based on your organization’s requirements.

I can’t move to cloud yet. When is ________ coming to cloud?

Over the last few years, we’ve made significant investments in our cloud platform’s security, extensibility, product functionality, scalability, and more to meet your current and future needs and there’s lots more on the way. However, we understand some of you may still be waiting on upcoming capabilities to be available in cloud, like data residency, so we’ve updated our cloud roadmap to give you visibility when your requirements will be met. As we learn more about your requirements, we will update the roadmap with the details you need to be confident that your requirements will be met, and on what timeframe. We’ve also updated our Trust Center with new information on compliance and security available in our cloud products, and how our teams are expanding coverage to help you meet compliance, security, and scalability needs.

We know data residency is a requirement for many of you to move to cloud. While it is currently offered with our cloud Enterprise plan, we understand those of you with fewer than 1,000 cloud users still need this requirement met. Additionally, regardless of your size, we’ve heard from many of you that you have additional requirements that aren’t currently on our roadmap. To make it easy to follow any updates we plan to introduce for smaller tiers, we've created a ticket (CLOUD-11064) that you can watch.

We appreciate all of the feedback you’ve provided us over the years to shape the roadmaps of all three of our deployments - cloud, server, and Data Center. Please continue to check out our roadmap and if you see any of your requirements missing, join our server community group to share your feedback. As a group member, you’ll be part of shaping the future of our cloud offerings. We plan to connect group members with Atlassian Product Managers working on the requirements across each of the areas you care most about (e.g. security, change management). Our Product Managers will first and foremost listen in order to understand your needs, and they will also present our progress to date, and solicit feedback on future plans and roadmaps.

Atlassian will continue to offer and invest in Data Center for the future as our on-prem offering

In addition to providing you with three years of server support, we will continue to offer Atlassian Data Center, our self-managed enterprise edition that allows you to maintain control over your environment and meet your unique security, compliance, and scale demands. You can run Data Center on your own hardware or host behind your own firewall in public cloud providers such as AWS or Azure. Atlassian Data Center is, and will continue to remain, a critical offering for many of you with strict business requirements or regulations.

Over the past year, we’ve significantly invested in our Data Center offerings, ramping up the delivery of new enterprise-grade features like support for CDN, rate limiting, advanced auditing, and more. To learn more about what’s available in Data Center or what’s coming in the future, check out our Data Center roadmap.

We also recently announced that we’re including some of our most powerful Atlassian apps and new features with our Data Center subscriptions to help you meet your need for better collaboration and increased insights.

• Jira Software Data Center: Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Portfolio for Jira)

• Confluence Data Center: Team Calendars for Confluence, Analytics for Confluence

• Jira Service Desk Data Center: Insight - Asset Management, Insight Discovery

Finally, we understand many of you already run and may continue to run both cloud and Data Center products so we’re exploring how we can make using cloud and Data Center together easier, such as providing enhanced integrations or a unified administration experience.

We are working on a solution for community customers who can’t yet move to cloud

We’ve heard feedback from many of you who work for charitable non-profit organizations that you require community discounts for our Data Center products. We are working hard on a solution and will share an update in the near future. We understand the importance of your work and have no intention of making it harder. Until then and for an additional three years, you’ll continue to have access to maintenance and support for your server products, in line with commercial license customers.

Thank you for your feedback and engagement with us

I hope this helped clarify some of your largest questions or concerns. I want to thank you again for your partnership over the years and for making Atlassian the company it is today. I understand these changes are disruptive and we are here to help you navigate these changes. We appreciate your continued support and are committed to your success.

[David Goldstein]

@Cameron Deatsch Can you confirm that, at least before Feb 2024, Atlassian will not be announcing a product end-of-life date for Jira and Confluence Data Center?

To help customers and vendors understand Atlassian's commitment to those Data Center products, we were looking for much more specificity from "Our plans for the future of Data Center". But there's no mention of the longevity of those products, nor can one extrapolate the answer from the Data Center public roadmap since it does not cite any dates beyond 2021.

[Stephen Sifers]

Hello @David Goldstein _Arsenale_

To assure you about Data Center, I will quote from the above;

In addition to providing you with three years of server support, we will continue to offer Atlassian Data Center, our self-managed enterprise edition that allows you to maintain control over your environment and meet your unique security, compliance, and scale demands. You can run Data Center on your own hardware or host behind your own firewall in public cloud providers such as AWS or Azure. Atlassian Data Center is, and will continue to remain, a critical offering for many of you with strict business requirements or regulations.

Over the past year, we’ve significantly invested in our Data Center offerings, ramping up the delivery of new enterprise-grade features like support for CDN, rate limiting, advanced auditing, and more. To learn more about what’s available in Data Center or what’s coming in the future, check out our Data Center roadmap.

Also, reviewing the Data Center roadmap linked above will give insight into the coming soon and future work for Data Center. Though a date past 2021 may not be queued up, these are features and capabilities we're committed to but don't have an exact ETA.

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

[David Goldstein]

@Stephen Sifers From your response, I don't think you understand my question. You simply restated that Atlassian will continue to offer Atlassian Data Center for an unspecified period of time. That's not the assurance Atlassian customers and vendors are looking for.

Can @Cameron Deatsch, or another official spokesperson from Atlassian, please confirm that, at least before Feb 2024, Atlassian will not be announcing a product end-of-life date for Jira and Confluence Data Center? This assures your customers and vendors that Jira and Confluence Data Center will be actively developed and supported by Atlassian for many years to come.

[Alex Janes]

@Cameron Deatsch @Stephen Sifers 

I think there's two things you can do to convince us Data Center isn't going anywhere.

1. Come out and tell us, Data Center isn't going anywhere, and will continue to be offered BEYOND the EoL for server.
2. Put some future plans in your roadmap. Right now, Data Center has exactly 1 item for Jira Software future plans, and everything else is Bamboo. It doesn't seem like you have future plans to keep it around when you literally have no future plans for the products.

[Alex Janes]

@Stephen Sifers What concerns me is, instead of directly answering whether Data Center is here to stay AT LEAST beyond server EoL, you re-post quotes quotes from your official statements.

Why is it so hard to answer directly, yes or no, whether Data Center is here to stay? Frankly, I think I already know the answer. It's probably because its not here to stay, and there's already loose plans to retire it too. Your instructions are probably to not directly answer it, as that would then mean giving us more bad news, or lying to us, neither of which you want to do.

PLEASE, prove me wrong. I know it seems like you already answered this by pasting that quote again. But dancing around the question by rehashing it into something that SEEMS like a yes, is not a yes. It feels more like a maybe/no.

[Dalectric]

I simply can't take the risk that I switch to a subscription product like Data Centre, that becomes EOL and then we're left with nothing as we can't move to cloud.

Therefore I'm sticking with Server,

[Stephanie Grice]

David & Alex,

We're committed to investing in Data Center for the long term, and we hope that the velocity with which we are shipping new features and functionality to Data Center -- and the fact that we are launching a brand new Data Center product, Bamboo Data Center -- reassures you of this commitment. Atlassian will continue to offer and invest significantly in Data Center as our on-prem offering because we understand that it is a critical offering for many of our customers with strict business requirements or regulations and it is a critical path for customers to use as a stepping stone to cloud via AWS for example. We intend to deliver a world-class experience for all of our customers regardless of how they deploy our products.

In regards to your questions about our roadmap, we have a number of capabilities labeled 'coming soon' which we will ship between now and Q2 2021. These include zero downtime upgrades for bug fixes in Bitbucket and Confluence, a number of features to help you clean up your instance in our Data Center products similar to our archiving capabilities in Jira, and Data Pipeline, which will export data in bulk to your data warehouse or business insights tool for increased visibility, reporting, and stronger business decisions.

To see more of what will ship between now and Q2 2021 please visit the coming soon portion of our roadmap. We will continue to add new capabilities for Q3 2021 and beyond once they are ready to share to the future portion of our roadmap.

[Dalectric]

All these new features are Data Centre centric though, and I have no use for them, which is why I use the Server offering in the first place.

What I'd be interested in is new features that give good value for users and adminstrators on the core functionality, as well as fixing many long standing bugs or absent featues with the products. Those seem to be thin on the ground.

[Marc Minten _EVS_]

I am sorry, but after last announcements, having Atlassian saying "we promise that..." does not make ANY sense to me....

As we can (for internal reasons) and will NOT go to Cloud, for us the biggest risk is that Atlassian will announce one day they will abandon Datacenter too. They become totally untrustable...

My interpretation is there are "some" people at Atlassian that decided some time ago to invest a lot in Cloud applications, that see the cost raising but not see the revenue coming accordingly. To "save their seat", they no try to "force" us to go to the Cloud. Upsetting customers is none of their concerns

[Henrik Ridder]

I second this! 

We can and will NOT go to Cloud.

We have customers that have 50-100 users and are all air-gaped! And that will not changes.

Going to DC will cost them too much so I guess we have to look for other products that can meet our needs.

This is a shame because we have been using Atlassian products for over 10 years and have invested a lot of work in getting it to work for our customers in their specific environment.

[Dalectric]

I'll make my points again that your post doesn't cover.

Cloud is simply not an option for us

1. Data must stay on our site
2. We must maintain control of when products are upgraded.
3. We need to customise our server installations to suit our requirements.

This means we would need to upgrade to Data Centre licenses. However if we don't upgrade before Feb 21 we start to lose out financially by not upgrading to Data Centre due to the loyalty discounts available. So therefore we don't have 3 years to make this decision but 3 months.

Data Centre is a huge financial increase (even with the loyalty discounts) which we simply haven't budgetted for and cannot as our FY goes until end of March 21. Plus the current financial climate has squeeze finances even more.

Moving from the perpetual licence of Server to the annual subscription of Data Centre puts us at a huge risk of the product being discontinued and being left with no product. This may not be for some years after 2024, but it's a risk all the same. Who would have thought Server would be discontinued!

[Tom Shaffer]

Moving from the perpetual licence of Server to the annual subscription of Data Centre puts us at a huge risk of the product being discontinued and being left with no product.

This needs to be repeated and highlighted!

It's a big risk moving to Data Center because of the licensing. That decision can't be taken lightly.

[Dalectric]

It's part of the reason why I think I'll be sticking with Server and take the risk when it's no longer supported

[Scion]

You failed to address why any company should trust their data on your cloud, when you explicitly make them agree that you can delete their data for any reason without notice if you, in your sole subjective discretion, find that the data violates your policies.

If you hold sensitive data from a government agency in a country that Australia has high tensions with, what's to keep you from suddenly declaring that agency's data as a violation of your policies and deleting it without notice?

What if that government agency supports politics that Atlassian does not support? How is there any trust that you will not delete their data at a whim?

Before, you could just direct those customers to server and wash your hands from any and all liability. But now you are saying that you want to take on that liability, but only for *some* things.

Without a version of your cloud that is protected from the prying eyes of Atlassian itself, your cloud offering will never live up to be even close to what your server offering had.

There are clearly customers, like us, that you have explicitly told you do not want on your cloud platform. What are your plans for supporting these customers who cannot afford data center, and would move to the cloud if they could, but you refuse to let do so in any reasonable fashion?

[Luke Johnson]

I have a really simple (I think) solution.

Why not just rename Data Center to 'On-prem Edition' and have two product tiers?

It could be the same software build, just a product key to unlock the advanced features.

[Stephen Sifers]

Hello Luke,

That's a clever idea you have, but the reality is that Data Center as a product isn't designed to have tiers (This was the separation between Server and Data Center). I would like to point out that you are able to run Data Center in a non-clustered configuration that allows you to have a single node Data Center (reduced overhead of multiple nodes if needed).

More information on this at Running Jira Data Center on a single node 

The way Data Center is licensed would enable all Data Center features, regardless if deployed in single or multiple nodes. More on the benefits of Data Center at Data Center : What are the benefits of Data Center over Server deployments? 

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

[Dalectric]

Thanks for the link to the differences. This however makes me realise that I'm being forced to buy a product I don't need, which is why we use Server in the first place.

Also it was fine for Data Centre to not have tiers as Server filled that gap. Now you're killing off Server, Data Centre needs to change to fill the gap required by your customers. I don't know why Atlassian don't see that as important.

[Alex Janes]

That's a clever idea you have, but the reality is that Data Center as a product isn't designed to have tiers (This was the separation between Server and Data Center).

@Stephen Sifers Ok, but that's moot now. You are eliminating server.

You need to have these lower tiers on Data Center.

[Luke Johnson]

@Alex Janes Surely its not that hard to build in a software feature lock in the stuff we don't need...

"I would like to point out that you are able to run Data Center in a non-clustered configuration that allows you to have a single node Data Center (reduced overhead of multiple nodes if needed)." - That's a technical reason that we already know. We're Atlassian admins who have been using your products a long time. We're not dumb. 

If you bought a car and then came back 3 years later to buy the newer model at 4x the price that you also would never 'own', when it only has a bigger engine, would you?

[Alex Janes]

@Stephen Sifers It's like, how do you not see that what you are saying, IS the problem...

We were perfectly happy running server without clustering. Now, to accomplish the same thing, we have to spend 10x or more compared to server costs.

I'm sorry. I really am trying to control my temper here. But, the same talking points haven't quelled your customers. 

[Marc Minten _EVS_]

So in a resume : we should move to DataCenter. As we do not need the clustering we end up with one server. We do not need the added "features" (like their portfolio option that they cannot sell neirther).

So bottom line : we will have exactly the same at 2 to 3 times (!) the cost.

[Roger Oberg]

So true. Except that they will ramp up the cost up to 6 times in some scenarios. Yay!

[Thomas Meiboeck]

@Stephen Sifers i think, thats now your problem. You want to kill our on Prem Servers? Then give us the full Data Center to the same price, if you are not able to set policies on the Product.
No one, who is using the on prem servers, has the need for a data center, or their features.
And no one is willing to pay this outrageous fees.
Is this so hard to understand?

regards, Thomas

[Jorden Van Bogaert]

Hi

Seeing Insight become a native app for JSD is very nice, but will it also continue to be available for Jira Software? Even if Jira Service Desk is not installed at all?

We have setups that heavily use Insight in JSW projects as well as Service Desk projects, and some of the Insight importer add-ons. Is there any roadmap for those?

Thanks in advance!

[Vicky Blease]

Hi,

I think it's fair to say your announcement has not been received positively by a large number of your user base. I understand that you will carry on regardless, but can I ask that you reconsider your increase in server pricing from February?

https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/future-pricing/server-pricing/faqs#general-questions

I know you think you've given us ample warning, but I hope the responses you've received on your thread (https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Atlassian-Cloud-Migration/To-all-Atlassian-server-champions-we-want-to-hear-from-you/qaq-p/1500873) show that plenty of us have been completely blindsided by this news.

Our license fees between 2020 and 2021 have now doubled; that is a huge ask from SMEs that have 3 months notice to reallocate budget. Your advantage plans played a part in us choosing Atlassian products in the first place; it's hugely unfair to now revoke those with 3 months notice.

Please, at the very least, give us 12 months grace before making these changes. Would be even better if you could scrap this altogether!

[David Willson]

@Cameron Deatscha lower tier DC option still off the table? Seems crazy that a 60 person company needs to buy a 500 user DC license? That seems crazy doesn't it?

[Stephen Sifers]

Hello David,

I recently replied to another thread answering a question similar to yours. Hopefully, you find that answer helpful (snippet from the whole answer);

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

Source: Reply to Andrew and Alex's question. 

Respectfully,
Stephen Sifers

[ASTEN RATHBUN]

Yup, crazy.

[David Willson]

Hey @Stephen Sifers  thanks for the reply! :)

Yep, I saw that. Thank you for being very clear that there is no plan. That leaves no room for interpretation.

But my question is "isn't that just crazy"? I genuinely want to know what you think; 60 person company 500 user license.

I'm a huge fan of Atlassian, I am a ACE leader, and an advocate for Atlassian both in my company and anyone who will listen. Additionally I'm happy to spend my discretionary time promoting Atlassian, because of my high regard of the company, the quality of products and values.

I'm not sure if you have seen it but, I wrote an open letter to the Atlassian founders, do you think you could forward them the URL? I would really like for them to read it.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/An-Open-Letter-Atlassian-s-Forgotten-Middle-re-The/ba-p/1510036#M3448

The customers who make up the forgotten middle from this announcement need a more affordable DC tier. Please hear this feedback, and if you can please help getting this message to the founders I would greatly appreciate it.

[Dalectric]

You may want to use this form to send it to the founders, who apparently read the feedback

https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/contact-ceos

[David Willson]

Great suggestion - submitted! - Request #CEO-7252

[David Willson]

I received a reply, which is awesome. The best line it was:

"We’ve heard your suggestion, that we create a more affordable user tier for customers like you and we’re looking into it"

@Cameron Deatsch @Stephen Sifers - I would still really like the founders to read my letter, could you send them the link? (to be expected the feedback to the founders looks to be staffed by a team)

[Stephanie Grice]

@David Willson I know several teams at Atlassian have read your post and I will make sure your letter makes it's way to the founders. Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us... have you applied to the Server Champion community group? Another great way to have your voice heard.

[David Willson]

Yep! Thanks very much for forwarding it to them. I really appreciate it!

[Tom Shaffer]

@Stephanie Grice

Thank you for your post. After reading several of the major threads discussing this whole thing, I think this is the first and only time I've read something that could be considered sympathetic and caring to the customer. Your post was not only helpful but encouraging and is exactly what we've been missing for the past month and a half.

Even if our requests don't amount to anything, the very least we can see is more posts like yours to at least know your team cares. Have a great rest of your day.

[Andrew Pane]

@Cameron Deatsch : 

Why is your messaging here (and in other Community threads) about the future of Data Centre in direct contradiction to what your co-CEO Scott Farquhar has been telling shareholders?

See the following link where Scott indicates that he expects "all [Atlassian] customers will migrate to cloud over the medium term":

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/10/30/atlassian-corporation-plc-team-q1-2021-earnings-ca/

[Taylor Huston]

This doesn't really address most of the concerns us professional Jira Admins have, namely that there will always be a non-zero amount of customers that cannot use a SaaS offering for this sensitive data, but cannot justify the current expense of Data Center.

[Andrew Laden]

I can only read this decision as the death knell for on premise. Without a lower end/cost on-premise version availability, there will be no new customers for the on premise edition. It will be a dying product that will linger around for the benefit of those few companies that are willing to shell out the big dollars needed to support it.

The cloud version it not suitable for us for many of the same reasons that have been mentioned above. And these timelines are completely crazy. In the middle of a pandemic when work has already slowed down in many companies, and now across the holiday season when many companies run on reduced resources due to vacation etc. No one will have the time to adjust to this. 

 And the restrictions don't work either. If on march first, I want to increase my license count or buy a new add on, I wont be able to without completely changing my license model, and throwing away the support that I have paid for for an extended period of time?

Atlassian is not being fair to their on-prem customers.  We are being thrown to the lions in favor of their cloud business.

[Tom Shaffer]

For this being such a remarkably huge change for many customers, we are now needing another thread for frequently asked questions that probably should have been figured out long before such announcement was even made.

And yet here we are, the exact same thing happening here in this new thread where the same very specific questions are being asked and ignored or not answered.

Anyone new to all of this - many of us have been asking the hard (but important) questions over and over in other threads. Questions involved in deciding if we should put our company and professional reputations on the line. Questions which we're looking for accurate answers for what we're actually asking. We aren't getting the answers to them even though we know the Atlassian team is seeing the questions.

That silence, the lack of complete answers, the double-speak, should be everything you need to know about how you're viewed as a customer to Atlassian. It's how we're being treated right now. I'll come back every now and again to see where this all leads but I think by now Atlassian is way too afraid to tell us the truth - they don't want small/medium customers any longer and they will soon shut down any on-premises offering.

[Stephen Reece]

That they keep dancing around mentioning any length of time that DC would continue to be offered is them telling us that it will not be offered much longer.

[Kensuke Karukomi （軽込 健介）]

I saw many comments about the needs of lower user-tier of DC on previous post, and I think most of us really have interests about that. 

However, you didn't provide any statements about that. I would really appreciate it if you could provide the reason why.

[Kensuke Karukomi （軽込 健介）]

I would like to comment from another perspective.

Currently, we cannot simply move to cloud due to company/industrial regulations and technical limitations. 

However, if all of our concerns were solved, I don't still have feeling to do so. Here is the reason why:

• You make changes continuously.
  I know that's CI/CD. It is not a problem by itself - excluding auditing issues about update history.
• Some changes also caused problems in the past.
  I can understand zero-defect is 'mission impossible' as a software engineer, so it is not a problem also.
  eg) https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-74854
• However, it has not solved yet after 3 months over...
  I cannot accept this situation if it is in our environment. Because the above is critical issue for Japanese macOS users.
• You said you are working hard for cloud. However, the following issue exists over 9 years and there is no concrete plan yet:
  https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CLOUD-6999
  This feature is essential for suiting branding rules in some companies.

To make a long story short:
If you motivate us to move to cloud, I think that you should get user's trusts by not just plans but actual results.

[Jonny]

We have the same issues. I sent Atlassian several emails regarding "company/industrial regulations and technical limitations" but it felt like they ignored my concerns and was reading from a crib sheet.

After several emails I gave up trying to get the answers I needed...

[Luke Johnson]

I am starting to prod them on their social channels. You should do the same.

[David Willson]

Some one pointed me to - https://www.atlassian.com/company/contact/contact-ceos - as well. I think the quantity of messages is going to matter at this stage, so if you feel strongly I would recommend sending a well written considerate note telling your story. 

[Alex Janes]

@David Willson Just sent the CEOs the contents of my support message. It's long, and comprehensive in explaining why I won't go to the cloud.

I recommend reading it to understand some detailed reasons as to why we won't be moving.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Feedback-Forum-discussions/An-update-on-your-top-questions-and-concerns-about-our-recent/m-p/1532520#M1847

[Erick van Rijk]

@Stephen Sifers @Cameron Deatsch 

This new update does clarify some points made on the other threads, but it still does not answer most of the outstanding questions that are in the other threads.

Thinking out of the box here, but what is preventing Atlassian of making the "cloud" applications run on-prem using docker/k8s? I only see benefits:

• Customers buy their per seat license (so Atlassian still get the same for SaaS).
• Customers can host their own in-house data (no more issues with data residency)
• Customers can upgrade when they are ready
• Customers can test specific builds before upgrade (test pods)
• Benefit for your service professionals (they can provide onsite support and consultancy)
• Potential clients can do a trial run internally with smaller teams and not have to send their data to the cloud

This way you still have your "cloud" platform, but can keep the customers that cannot move to the cloud for whatever reason.

To be honest the DC offering is not interesting for anyone that has under 500 users AND with the non-perpetual license there is no guarantee that Atlassian will not pull the rug under your feet after the 2024 deadline.

As I previously wrote in a longer post (that was deleted/went into the void), just be clear with your customers. If Atlassian wants to go 100% cloud, say so (you already said so at least to your stock holders). If there are technical challenges as a reason not to support server anymore, say so. If there is more money to be earned with SaaS, say so (you are a business so we understand). But at least communicate clearly, no corporate speak, half-truths or alt-facts. The world is already going to hell because of this.

The people in this forum, placed their trust in Atlassian and helped you grow, at least show them the respect of honesty. (oh and the information on Trust page is incorrect. Atlassian claims GDPR/Privacy shield compliance, which you are clearly are not).

[ASTEN RATHBUN]

So, still no effs given for users of small air gapped networks.

No surprise.

[Jonny]

This update does not resolve our concerns. We cannot use cloud and that is highly unlikely to change due to sensitivity of data, having control over when we update the instance and customizations we have implemented to meet business needs. 

The alternative option being DC but that isn't viable at the current price point. We have two instances we pay for currently with server edition (100 users on one network, 30 on another which has no internet connectivity). Trying to convince the business to pay for a 500 user licence at triple the cost is highly unlikely to go down well...

Its left us in a very awkward position. As a business we have been adding more of our business processes into the system recently. We have been happy with the server edition and the cost reasonable too. Now I feel like taking a step back and putting this all on hold.

Seems like we are wasting our time arguing about it, Atlassian have made a decision and screwed over a lot of customers. Time to move on if this mess isnt sorted out soon. It's a real shame, we have been a customer for a decade but will have to start planning a migration due to JIRA becoming quite integral to our business.

[Jonny]

Why are my messages being removed from this thread?

[Alex Janes]

There's been a lot of that going around.

@Stephen Sifers can we get this moderation issue addressed? :)

[Stephen Sifers]

Jonny,

I am able to see messages from you on this thread. Most likely they were stuck in our spam queue and needed to be cleared out. If you're still unable to see your posts on this thread let me know.

Regards,
Stephen Sifers

[Jonny]

This post does not address any of the concerns. We have been a customer of Atlassian (JIRA Server and Confluence) for 10 years. We have paid for an instance of JIRA on one of our systems with 100 users, and another instance with 20 users.

None of the alternative offerings are suitable for us, either because we cannot use cloud or the massively increased cost.

What are you going to do about this? JIRA has been integral to our business and if you will not be changing your mind we will be cancelling all of our support with you and looking for alternatively. Massive shame but we cannot take the risk.

[Alex Janes]

@Cameron Deatsch This update still leaves a lot to be desired. I wrote a pretty long response to support about why I cannot go to the cloud, and to answer their question as to whether I am feeling overwhelmed. I think you should read it to understand more clearly why some of us can't go to the cloud.

Full disclosure, I debated posting this to a public forum, as it mentions abortions (Of which my organization does not provide, nor fund, but will refer a patient to another provider if they request it; more on that in my support response). Please note, this post is in no way to make a political or moral statement about abortions or women's healthcare. This is simply to explain the concerns I have with the cloud. The topic is controversial, and that presents a problem for us in the cloud.

I ask that no one derail this thread into that kind of political discussion, as that is not what we are discussing here. Take that discussion to another community.

Without further ado, here is my response to support...

----------

We are using Jira to collect and approve authorizations for medical procedures. This requires us to put ALOT of protected health data into Jira to properly process authorizations, and report on approvals and denials.

I'm not against the Cloud as a concept. At least if I moved to azure, the data drives are still in my control, and I can take raw control of the data again if necessary. I have already done that for some applications (but not Jira).

However, there's some major issues I have with your cloud...

First, the data storage on your cloud is not HIPAA compliant. Considering this is HIPAA data, and Atlassian is not a covered entity, Atlassian would have to sign a BAA with us in order to overcome the legal issues. You won't do that until 2023. This isn't my only issue, but its a deal breaker for now.

Next, our contracts. The terms of our agreement with these providers do not allow us to lose control of the data for any reason. I might be able to swing moving to Azure, since the data disks are under our control enough to still be considered 'under our control', but not to your cloud when I lose that much access to the true data.

Then, the Acceptable Use Policy. Women's healthcare is a very volatile industry. Planned Parenthood, for example, struggles to maintain business relationships because they are in a controversial field. Adagio Health doesn't directly fund abortions (simply to stay out of that political argument, not to make any statements). But, our legal department cannot take that risk.

Quoting your AUP...
"Is deceptive, fraudulent, illegal, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, harmful to minors, pornographic (including child pornography, which we will remove and report to law enforcement, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children), indecent, harassing, hateful"

I 100% understand the reason for this statement in your AUP. I personally don't think we violate it. But it presents a problem for us.

This is an example of the issue. This won't necessarily specifically happen, but perhaps something like it could happen. We are not doing anything illegal. But, some women's healthcare topics and procedures are literally illegal/considered very indecent in some states and countries. If you, an Australian company, reviewed my content, maybe its not illegal in Pennsylvania. But, what if your servers were in Alabama (or some other more conservative location)? Now we might have to deal with their laws on women's healthcare. Maybe Alabama considers Women's healthcare data obscene or illegal, and orders you to delete the data. Legal cannot risk that.

Another example, lets say I reach out for support. some of your staff may not be on board with women's healthcare. There could be instances where an employee refuses to help us for religious purposes, which is somehow a thing in USA. Just because Atlassian doesn't think it's indecent or its not illegal in PA or Australia, one of your employees may not be happy with it, and deny us support, or worse, deny access to our data.

The supreme court is poised to make abortion illegal. If that happens, alot of local governments can start going ham on companies hosting any data that even references an abortion.

I know you think this AUP issue is silly, and very un-likely to happen. But we have had problems with other companies in the past, just like Planned Parenthood has, and we don't even do abortions. It was all simply because we are in the controversial field of women's healthcare. Hence why this non-profit program is so great for us. We got some serious software without having to jump through huge hurdles, nor price inflations. This non-profit is able to do great things for patients because we don't have to spend as much on other items. This was one of those items.

After that, we have multi tenancy issues. We have had an instance on Office 365 where content metadata was revealed to other tenants unrelated to us. This particular incident did not reveal patient data, but it highlighted the issues with multi tenancy and high security data. The risk of breach with this much HIPAA data is too great to go on your cloud.

Finally, trust. Frankly, you broke all of our trust with this announcement. People rely on your software to power some of their most important business processes. Then you announced this out of the blue, without a complete plan on how to address some very obvious issues with the plan. I understand that you could not have planned for every situation, nor every contingency, nor complaint. But, there's some very obvious things you should have figured out before this announcement was made.

Non-profit licensing is something that, should have been figured out before the announcement. Same with highly regulated industries. It just seems like there wasn't enough thought put into it.

As far as how I'm feeling, overwhelmed is an understatement. I have championed Jira for our organization, and my boss was NOT happy about your announcement, nor the fact that I pushed you guys for so long. A lot of system administrators and Atlassian champions (not just me) have been completely blind sided, and have lost the trust of their co-workers. Now you expect us to trust you to fix everything. How? Seriously, how can you genuinely expect someone to trust that you are working with them, when you started by announcing this, with no answers to some of the REALLY obvious questions that are out there?

I went ahead and used your migration estimation tool. I would pay a BOAT LOAD more money to go to the cloud, when in reality, I don't need you/can't have you hosting my data. Data Center is equally expensive.

I really hope you can announce data center is free for non-profits + free marketplace addons again. Because I can't afford it, and it would really be abandoning someone who champions your product to PAYING companies, in addition to my own non-profit organization."

[Alex Janes]

Today, I had a lovely conversation with a support representative named Eli. He was extremely helpful in understanding more about how Jira Cloud works, and helped me to alleviate at least some of my concerns. The conversation did not alleviate all of my problems. But, I feel it went much better than the conversation that is going on in the community right now.

I'd like to go through all of the points in my post, and explain where Atlassian succeeds and fails to address them. But before I do, let me state that Eli, the support representative, was more than helpful in assisting me, and did everything he could to help me understand the decisions that were made. He did not just spew canned talking points to me, and actually walked through one by one with me on each of my concerns. He deserves a raise over there, especially after being hit with a Typhoon before being able to get back to me. (Seriously Eli, you don't need to apologize for losing power and internet for a Typhoon, delaying your response. Stay safe, and worry about your life before your customers.)

First, HIPAA. Eli and I agreed that 2023 is the estimated timeframe, and there's nothing he, nor I, can do about it. It is currently a deal breaker for us. I believe this is something Atlassian should've completed BEFORE retiring server, but since it is on their roadmap, I'll consider it being addressed. They know it's a problem, and plan to address it. But the fact that it's not ready until almost EoL time for server, to me this is a failure on Atlassian's part.

Next, contracts. There wasn't anything Eli, nor Atlassian can do about this. It's just the reality of my situation, and if I can't go to the cloud, so be it. But, since Atlassian doesn't have an on-premise answer for me other than EXPENSIVE data center, its a failure on their part. There needs to be a DC tier for smaller customers who just cannot go on the cloud.

Next, the AUP. This was tricky, as Eli is not a lawyer, and can't give me legal advice about it. That being said, he did give me some insight on how their process works for enforcing the AUP. He explained to me that first, in general (but not completely out of the question), Atlassian does not go out of its way to check if you are following the AUP. The only time they generally check a customer is if they receive a complaint about a particular cloud tenant, and will investigate at that point. I reiterated that the problem is that, who defines indecent or obscene? If there is a medical image of a uterus on our instance, will it be flagged for indecency or obscenity? He explained to me that actions are not taken without first consulting their legal team; and that if this situation were to come up for me, he is fairly certain (but of course, isn't a lawyer, and can't guarantee) they would understand the context of the data, and that we are a healthcare organization who uses it for medical purposes, not to be indecent or obscene. There is 0% chance I will ever get the Atlassian legal team to truly comment on this. So, I'm willing to give Atlassian a somewhat successful grade on this point. They understand the medical context of data, and just because its considered a private image, doesn't mean it violates the policy.

(This doesn't help @Scion and I personally hope Atlassian can assist them further with this issue to continue operating their business. Everyone's gotta make money somehow. I don't know exactly what content they create, but if its legal, then there shouldn't be anything wrong with it. Don't look at it if you don't like it.)

After that, multi-tenancy. Eli explained to me that Jira instances do indeed share physical infrastructure, but the organizational instances are truly separate instances of Jira (or Confluence, or etc). This is a huge success in my book for Atlassian. Keeping the data logically separated with more than just a column in a table is way more secure, and can do a lot to prevent data leakage. There is no 100% fool proof security on any product anywhere. Anyone who states that is crazy and wrong. But this does make me feel at least a bit better about how secure the cloud is.

And finally, trust. Pretty much, there was nothing Atlassian could say to me to restore my trust other than, "Yep, we messed up, and we're going to revert this decision, and go back to the drawing board with more engagement with our community to make the plan." That would restore 90% of my trust in Atlassian. They would prove to me that their community of customers matter, and they will develop this plan more thoroughly before actually moving forward. Since we all know that isn't going to happen, I will call this a failure.

Ultimately, the legal team on my side of things are still unwilling to risk the AUP given our volatile industry. So, I will not be going to the cloud and will eventually have to go to data center, if the price becomes more reasonable; or to another product entirely if the pricing is not made more reasonable.

Atlassian, in my opinion, you have a lot of planning to do before February to resolve the multitude of issues presented to you by the community. Anything less than a completely outlined plan addressing all of our posted issues is the last straw for me. Even if some of the items, the response is, "We don't plan to do anything about it." Fine. But plan this out and tell us before February so we aren't left wondering what to do, and don't spend money unnecessarily.

(Also, he did reiterate that something is in the works for Community eligible organizations to get data center licenses, but that he couldn't go further into detail yet. Simply that, something is in the works.)

[Luke Johnson]

Such a shame that you went to all this effort and not even the slightest acknowledgement.

This is beyond a poor customer experience from Atlassian. The contempt is real.

[Roger Oberg]

We as many of you guys are also sitting in the same boat unfortunately. We have a small server environment for a single team due to similar requirements you are having.  We have gone all in with atlassian using a full stack of Jira,confluence,bitbucket,bamboo, Jira service desk,crowd and with lots of plug-ins and it have been working great for our need. 

When the announcement came, I asked the sales what the cost for going to data center would be (since cloud is not an option now and won’t be in the future for us). 
And the price went from ~16k$ to over 100k$ Including all “discounts”, and in the new price bamboo data center wasn’t even included since it haven’t been released yet. 

The message couldn’t be more clear. You don’t want us as customers any more.  Well thanks for that atlassian. 
I feel just so disappointed in you, I was the one that brought in the products over 10 years ago and been a truly fan of them and convincing my org to use then. And now I just have to clean up your mess you are causing. 

[Michael Woffenden]

So true and so pathetic.  Atlassian is ignoring the needs of many small companies who, as you did, went all-in with Atlassian.  Now we're being hung out to dry.

[Luke Johnson]

Surely you just have the extra $84k lying around. Did you check under the mattress or maybe in the cupboard in the lunch room? If you find extra, please send some my way for my own licensing :).

[Roger Oberg]

I’m going for a treasure hunt now, so hopefully if I find some hidden treasures I will send some dollars to you Luke as well😃

[Luke Johnson]

I might fly up to Sydney and knock on Mike Cannon-Brookes' door to see if he any spare change.

[Alex Janes]

I think it would be great if Atlassian could hold a larger form of this for the entire community to participate in.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Berlin-Brandenburg/Leaving-Serverland-First-Videos-and-Content-online/gpm-p/1534557

This conversation feels like it's going nowhere. So having a mini-conference to discuss this change in even greater detail would be awesome.

Would I like what they have to say during the event? Probably not. But it would feel less like we are being abandoned if there could be more updates and posts about what's going on.

[Thomas Meiboeck]

Hmmm, yesterday i wrote a comment, but it's not here.

That' why no one wants the cloud.

quod erat demonstrandum.

[Dave Liao]

Heh, but this isn't Jira or Confluence... 😜

[Thomas Meiboeck]

Ok, my fault.
Are you sure? :^)

[Dave Liao]

I haven't had my coffee yet, so maybe I'm not 100% sure... 😄

[Stephen Gentle]

I got an email notification about a reply to another thread which made me depressed enough to come back and think about this again...

So I just wanted to repeat so hopefully it's totally clear just how badly and absolutely Atlassian is screwing a whole bunch of small to medium businesses that were heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. There are plenty of reasons many businesses just absolutely can't move to cloud services (defence security, data residency and financial regulations outside the US being some of them for companies I'm working with), and it's really disappointing that the official line appears to be "just pretend those reasons don't exist"...

This change is a huge problem for a number of businesses I work with, and now we're evaluating other products we will move to, transitioning away from all the Atlassian tools. It's really a shame because I liked the software a lot, and pushed for it to be implemented with a bunch of people. So this isn't just screwing these companies but actually causes me reputational damage for on-boarding them onto what has become a dead end!

Anyway, we'll survive. We'll find replacements for Jira, Bitbucket and Confluence and life will go on. But I expect there are quite a few people like me who were all in on Atlassian products, but can't trust you anymore. My honest advice now for anybody evaluating software development tools is to avoid Atlassian like the plague (even if they are perfectly able to use cloud services), given you've shown you're willing to pull the plug on tools people need, or just go and double the price...

Regards,

A customer you've well and truly #@!%ed...

[Thomas Meiboeck]

If you have found suitable products, I would be interested in the result.

[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.

[Alex Janes]

For those of you waiting for an update on this thread, a new update thread was posted yesterday...

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Feedback-Forum-articles/What-s-new-Updates-related-to-the-server-end-of-sale-and-support/ba-p/1560200

[Kensuke Karukomi （軽込 健介）]

I think that Atlassian guys should give notice of new thread as a matter of courtesy...
I feel these threads are not communication but one-sided notification. 

I checked a new thread but there is no statement about lower DC tier. Again.