Answering your questions on changes to server and Data Center

[Scion]

I have already sent some private messages and opened a support ticket but, due to the draconian nature of your cloud Acceptable Content Policy, and the fact that you retain the right to delete our content without notifying us, Atlassian as a company is preventing us from moving to cloud even if we wanted to (and we don't).

This change disrupts several years of our future growth plans and, unless things are done to address them and help cushion the losses from server investment we've paid, it feels like you are quite literally kicking us from your platform.

We would love to continue using Atlassian products, but it feels like you quite literally will not let us. You were one of the last bastions for professional self-hosted solutions, and you are giving that up.

[Scion]

Also, what happens if our company grows and we need to upgrade to the next level of license after the January date? Will we be forced to buy cloud?

Edit: I see, it ends in 2022 unless you own starter licenses.

[DJX]

Well we should have seen the writing on the wall. Many tickets open for over 10+ years.

All we have seen in the cloud offering is non-stop UI changes and limited features. The UI has now gone full circle to the horizontal bar at the top again, except the handy "Issues" button is nowhere to be seen. In an ISSUE TRACKER, that's kind of an important feature to put in an obvious place.

You've lost a customer. The only thing to see now is how quickly I can get out.

[Tom Shaffer]

To be 100% honest, I've given their cloud services so many looks over the last couple of years expecting that for sure, by now, they can basically match what their servers counterparts can do but I come back disappointed each time.

I've given their cloud services many chances but the problem with it in our case is just the simply inherent issues with putting particular data on the cloud and the lack of being able to customize things which are important to us. It's definitely useful in a lot of cases but it's just not for us. And after 2/2024, I guess that means Atlassian products won't be for us any longer. :(

[DJX]

After reaching out to another vendor (they're a competitor, so I won't list the name) and asking about the longevity of their server product, this is the response they gave:

In our <Application> roadmap we include further development of both the Standalone and InCloud versions with the maximum feature parity. There are no plans to discontinue the <Application> Standalone version. We have a significant share of customers who are choosing to maintain <Application> on their servers, and their numbers are growing each month and the <Application> team is committed to delivering their best on our Standalone customers expectations.

Atlassian - This is what your response to your customers should look like.

We are all very aware that you wish you could re-invent yourselves today as a cloud SAAS provider and not deal with all of us troublesome people who want server software. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. We invested in you and supported you for 10+ years, and it's shameful to see how quickly you turn your back on us to go after "easier profits".

We hope you are happy with your younger, newer customers.

[Gregory Gleinig]

Well said.

-G

[Alex Janes]

@DJX Could you reach out to me? I'm looking for alternative vendors, but I don't want to derail the conversation, nor promote a competitor on Atlassian's site.

[marth8880]

@Alex Janes It rhymes with MetRains GlueTrack ;^)

[Alex Janes]

@marth8880 I figured that, but I was secretly hoping there was yet another option now. :D

[Ralph Olsson]

Yes, along with HitTab that's one of the ones we'll start trialling in our next cycle unless by then Atlassian have convinced us we'll have longterm access to DC for ballpark the same amount we're currently spending on Server.

[Eric Tolliver]

What other Atlassian products are on the chopping block?  After finishing our move of 2,000 users to Jira Server we were just ramping up users on Confluence.  I cannot afford to get stuck with another 2x-3x price increase so I need to immediately put the brakes on our Confluence move. 

I am now in the position of having to explain to management why I selected Jira and Confluence for our division.  We started with the Jira cloud version and found that it cannot handle our disk space requirements, does not have all of the add-ons we need, is extremely slow, and the interface changes too often.  The server abandonment does not leave us any options.

[Bridget]

@Eric Tolliver - check out this post about what we're doing to support server admins with hesitations/limitations for cloud. On that page you can also apply to join a community group where you can connect with team members and discuss how we can address your needs in the coming years before the end of server support. 

[adrian.simons]

I'm a really frustrated small organisation customer, under 10k spend per year. Data sovereignty issues have turned me off cloud and unless you can confirm the ability to specify data localisation we will be looking at alternatives.

Really underwhelmed that you released it on a weekend too, feels like you don't respect your customers.

[Tom Shaffer]

Really underwhelmed that you released it on a weekend too, feels like you don't respect your customers.

There was no mistake with them doing that. They know what they're doing.

[kk]

Have you taken a look at cloud pricing? Cloud is no sensible option, unless you have three to four times the money to spend.

[Kader Salhi]

This is a killing partner decision from Atlassian, we have a 100% server clients and specially banks that will never use cloud product. The only solution seems to switch for another product and probably suppliers.

Our commercial speech was "if you don't trust the viability of the supplier, trust Atlassian and it's community, you will never be alone" seems like it exactly the opposite with this decision and it's really a choc for us. 

Really hope that Atlassian will hear it's community and role back.

[Tom Shaffer]

Really hope that Atlassian will hear it's community and role back.

I would start either looking into their Data Center offering or look at alternatives. They already confirmed that the on-premises server decision isn't going to change.

[kk]

And Data Center will most likely follow suit, see my reasoning here.

[Jeremy Swan]

This is tragic for my users! After convincing hundreds of clients to use confluence over open source alternatives, atlassian has blown up our plans for the future. Native confluence has been terrible for responsive design and accessibility, but I’ve been able to manage these limitations by directly modifying on our instances on own servers, even integrating the US Web Design System. This type of customization will not longer be possible I would imagine, since it’s not available on cloud and I’d be surprised if data center allowed it, so I guess it’s time to move on. I feel like I’ve wasted the last 13 years of my career and squandered my credibility by recommending confluence to my many clients. Now I need to explain how we are to move to a new system... 2020 strikes again! 

[Gregory Gleinig]

We want nothing to do with the "Cloud" which is nothing more than someone elses servers.  I'm now forced to migrate off Jira/Bitbucket/Confluence/Crowd/Service Desk to other solutions which was unexpected.  

Goodbye Atlassian, was a great experiance with on-premise for over 10 years.

-G

[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!

[Hans Krone]

I speak for a company that's been using Atlassian products for years. While you obviously have put a lot of thought into this announcement (and the over all strategy), it is a huge disappointment, from a customers point of view, nonetheless. I'm afraid I have to agree with many others as they have voiced their concerns (to say the least), that this is very unfortunate.

If Atlassian actually follows through, we will migrate to different platforms from different vendors. After all, if Atlassian pulls the plug on local instances once, why trust them not to do it again in the future?

[Ferguson]

Atlassian is forcing us to move to the cloud. 

For now, customers can move to Data Center if they don't want to move to the Cloud.

But by looking into the Atlassian trend, Atlassian will stop Data Center support as well in the future and ask customers to switch the cloud.

In Cloud, you can't add additional security. It means for security you are totally depends on the Atlassian. Which is the thing I really don't like.

Customer like me for which Security is very important will face a many problem. 

Cloud security is tight, but it’s not infallible. Cybercriminals can get into those files, whether by guessing security questions or bypassing passwords.

But the bigger risk with cloud storage is privacy. Even if data isn’t stolen or published, it can still be viewed.

[kk]

Data Center is just _the same_ code base as Server: You can tell from some bugs on atlassian.com, whose content is, that some Data Center feature was inadvertently available in Server.

So: If they now ditch Server, they can be expected to try to do the same with Data Center.

Maybe not "fully", because e.g. the German Army will not suddenly switch to a cloud solution, but by making Data Center available only for top-tier seat counts, effectively cutting off the current Data Center customer base and forcing those to "go Cloud, together" :(

In essence, I will not opt for Atlassian products anymore, as my trust in them was misplaced, and very much so.

[JBennett]

Hi Atlassian. You seriously need to consider reverting this decision. My company is also another customer of yours and has been so for nearly a decade.

We have always used the Core and Server Edition and cannot use the cloud version due to various legal, regulatory and contractual/customer requirements. We also cannot justify paying the extortionate cost of Data Center (which I hear is due to increase) as we have a user base of roughly 100. We renew our maintenance every year but there is absolutely no way our business would stump up the extra for a 500 user licence which we do not need. 

This is an example of a customer you are screwing over and I hate to say it but it feels like a way you can try to extract more money from your customers. 

I do not believe this has been thought about in enough depth or do you not care about customers like us?

[David Yu]

Moving over from Server to Data Center is not without risk. We'd lose our perpetual license, and will then be at the whim of Atlassian if you decide to no longer support Data Center in the future. Unlike Server, the software would simply stop working when it reaches the end of the license.

Is there any assurance you can give buyers that if you end DC support in the future, you'll at least convert licenses to perpetual so buyers would have time to consider all their options?

[Dalectric]

That's a great point and something I'd not considered. Thanks for bringing this one up.

[Stephen Garber]

I don't disagree with discontinuing server, but the pricing for data center needs to come back in line with the server pricing otherwise companies are going to start using inferior applications. 

Jira is the industry standard, and the atlassian on-prem solutions work really well, are fast, and secure. 

Many companies don't want to put all of our sourcecode, work in progress and documentation in an external cloud, 

It's a shame to see atlassian pushing people to other solutions.

[Dalectric]

I feel that because they are now in a strong position in the industry, they have us hostage and can charge what they like......

[Andreas Löhr]

@Bryan Mayo to get back to the original topic of this thread, the most asked question seems to be „Why (the hell)?“. Also, second most: „Will you reconsider and offer smaller/SME-affordable packages of DC? At least consider the option?“

There were several explicit and implicit answers to the first question. Any serious feedback to the second question?

[JBennett]

We need answers to this. 500 user DC just does not work for our company. We get priced out and pushed out. The latter because we cannot utilise cloud.

[kk]

@JBennettCloud is even more expensive than Data Center. Only if you just have a very few users this might make sense. For our 2000 seat Server setup all of this is just a 215% (DC) or just shy of 500% (Cloud) increase. Unspeakable!

[Eric Tolliver]

@KJ  how are you able to contain moving to the cloud at 500% increase for 2,000 users?  Did you include Jira Access to allow corporate authentication (part of Jira Server) and Jira Cloud Premium since 2,000 users and many years of data will require more than the allotted 250GB disk usage?  Does it include the cost of subscriptions to third party add-ons that you already bought?  I suspect the actual costs to be much higher.

[kk]

@Eric TolliverMy statement was just the result of our research regarding "what are the options with Atlassian". We will surely _not_ go Cloud, and most likely also not "Data Center", because 215% times the current price for the exact same functionality just is not justifiable. Cloud would be a completely insane move, both from a functional perspective, and even more so from the price-point.

We are also researching how to leave the Atlassian ecosystem completely.

[James Clark]

The big challenges as I see them are 2 fold.

1) Data residency for customers smaller than the 500 minimum for data centre. 

2) The reduced feature set of many plugins on Jira Cloud vs Server

For some customers, this will make continuing with Jira and Confluence a non-starter. Are there any plans to resolve these challenges, and if so, what are they?

Cheers

James

[kk]

You forgot challenge 3: At least twice the price (DC) or more (Cloud).

[Michael Santangelo]

This is incredibly awful.

We are a small team using an on-site local-only Server license.  I understand that we bought the license and that means we can run it for perpetuity. However, not being able to pay a reasonable price for support means that we'll be switching as soon as we find a viable replacement.  We cannot and will not expose our private data, processes, procedures to the internet nor can we trust you to be the data custodians for our data. 

In short, no thanks. 

[Witold Dziel]

This was out of a sudden! Most of us I believe were not expecting this and most of us are still shocked! This is bad, bad idea...This will probably kill Atlassian tools in many, many companies. Most of them won't afford DC and others won't go to Cloud as these are totally different systems and you can't just replace JIRA server with a Cloud version just like that. 

Maybe it's time to check competitors systems?

[Erick van Rijk]

Seems my response seems to be deleted while editing as well? (is there a way to check mod activity)?

While I understand the move to cloud based services ($$$) and less support issues.
For a “minor” portion of your customers cloud services are simply not an option. It can be IP / lack of certification / regulations 21 CFR Part 11 or GDPR / company policy. Our Notified Body simply will not except external sources which we have no control over. Which puts our certification at risk.
Just the continuous upgrade path of cloud is a dealbreaker for the situation I am in. There is no way to check for data integrity of the contents. Filed a ticket for that but nobody was interested.
Datacenter at its current form is also a no-go for anyone under 500 users. Just the pricing will not pass management review. Leaving mid size business in the cold.

Any users that can work in the cloud probably already moved to it already. So either you are considering your remaining customers as dead wood that needs to be pruned for profits or someone is sleeping at the wheel.

At least I will have some time to look at alternatives. Sad to have to do this after using your products for over 8 years.

For a more detailed explanation: here

[MF]

Bad Decision. We have integrated a lot of automation Tasks out of JIRA SD.

For example: HR creates Onboarding ticket which gets a formal check of data. While transition to the next State a Webhook is called which creates the user and does some config tasks, like Group/Role setup, phone Number and so on.

After this whole automation step a Documentation about this job is automatically send to HR back.

A lot of this steps wont work in Future, as we are not willed to open the Firewall or replace internal Services to a more public Network Infrastructure Part.

[Asten]

I think time has come to launch an (open source) projet providing tools to migrate from Confluence/Jira/Bitbucket to alternatives...

[Andreas Löhr]

I can not believe that you really do this. Worst idea ever. In general and specifically for us.

Early this year we switched to a small Jira and BitBucket Server license (50 seats each), just last week we introduced Confluence as well. A killer argument for us was the ability to host on-premise. We do not want our customer’s data to be absorbed by a cloud, neither do our customers! Can you belive that?

Also the financial side. No more Server edition, just Data Center. Of which the smallest plan is factor 9 too big for us. Even more, you will increase the price for Data Center by factor 2! Does the feature set or the quality double as well? As we want to stay on-premise you are forcing us to pay factor 7 more money for something that we will not use (450 seats) or that we just do not need (clustering etc.). Yes, as existing customers, we can still get Server licenses for some years „grace“ period, but what then. I really hope that you reconsider. Let your (small) customers decide where they want their stuff to be hosted. At least offer some „smaller“ licenses for Data Center.

[Tom Shaffer]

I have a question - looking at this page, it looks like the majority of updates to the server offerings will end on 2/2/22 along with all updates to end on 2/2/24. After 2/2/24, will we still be able to use our on-prem server products (in my case, Confluence and Jira Service Desk) but updates and fixes will cease to continue?

As for my own feedback, no one likes price increases - especially very steep ones, and no one likes to be told that the product they've used for years is going to stop being supported. But I am thankful that you've given us a few years to get things figured out, we've seen worse from other companies. There was no mistake for the reason as to why this news was released on a Friday afternoon/evening in the US (making it very late Friday night to early Saturday for the rest of the world's majority). But it looks like the announcement did good things to your stocks so mission accomplished, right?

But the truly insulting part of this is the continued insistence that we know nothing about "the mysterious cloud" and why we should just go to it since Atlassian thinks they know better than us. I would double check with your marketing team to make sure they know it's not 2015 any longer. The whole "why you shouldn't be afraid of the cloud" tactic is becoming antiquated and anyone in charge of a large number of (potential) licenses knows the risks, the advantages, and the disadvantages of moving to the cloud by now. This move is all a money grab, don't pretend otherwise.

In 2020, especially well into the COVID-era, you are already in the cloud, in the process of moving to the cloud, or staying with your on-prem server for a very good and calculated reason. This whole thing isn't going to force us to store our crucial and confidential data on your cloud, it's going to force us to either continue using your unpatched software on an ever increasingly secured server (which sits right next to me) or will make me look at another product to go with.

We're not afraid of the cloud, we use the cloud already with nearly 100% of what we do in our company. I appreciate that you offer your products on the cloud for those which works best for them. But your cloud offerings fall short in so many ways important to us, compared to the server services. I'll leave it with this: if you didn't offer your server software in the first place (and only had the cloud offerings), we wouldn't have gone with your products at all due to their shortcomings.

(New account created for this post as I choose not to have my real identity revealed)

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello @Tom Shaffer 

Even with three years to prepare for these changes, we understand that not every customer will be ready to switch from our server products to our cloud products. And, you may have business requirements that might prevent you from ever operating in the cloud.

• Between February 2, 2021, PT and February 2, 2022, PT, we will continue to provide support (i.e. database, browser, Java) and bug fixes for server products.
• After February 2, 2022 PT, we will only provide security bug-fixes for critical vulnerabilities until the end of support date on February 2, 2024, PT.

After that date, your server products will reach the end of support, and no further product updates will be released. Noting that the Server license is perpetual, meaning you maintain permanent access to the application and you only loose support and upgrade options if you choose not to upgrade the license, so if you are operating internally removed from public access, and have no need for continued support, local maintenance may meet your needs at no cost to you.

We are also strengthening Atlassian Data Center by making some of our most potent apps available natively rather than additional add-on apps and offering Priority Support with Data Center subscriptions for most user tiers. To support this continued innovation, we are increasing the price of Data Center subscriptions on February 2, 2021 PT.

If migrating to the cloud is not an option for you, we offer a Data Center loyalty discounts  For annual Data Center subscription purchases or renewals before July 1, 2022, PT for up to 1000 users, that can help to additionally offset the cost increase.

If you do decide to move to cloud, you get the best of Atlassian – a platform that grows with you integrates with all your tools and gets smarter and faster every day. Enhanced security, improved reliability, accelerated innovation, easier to manage, lower cost of ownership, to name a few, with additional details noting:

You can learn more about the benefits of moving to the cloud here. 

Our migration-center provides end-to-end support throughout your move to Data Center, leveraging our proven best practices and resources, including:

• Step-by-step deployment guides show you how to plan and successfully migrate to either non-clustered or clustered Data Center.
• Resources and migration tools that can make migrating to Data Center easier.
• Support to guide you through every step of your journey to Data Center and ensure you have the information you need to be successful.
•  Solution Partners for complex setups and support to help you plan for, move to, and grow with Atlassian’s Data Center products. If you still have open questions after reviewing the documentation, our team will be happy to clarify them for you – get in touch .

Regards,
Earl

[Tom Shaffer]

Thank you Earl. I appreciate the factual parts of your post and the information and helpful links you provided. For future posts, you may want to refrain from the opinions ("...move to cloud, you get the best of Atlassian...") as that's how you completely lose the interest of someone who may be on the fence about this.

If your cloud offerings were truly your "best" we would have been on it already.

[Rob]

If cloud would be "the best", why isn't it GDPR compliant and allows to restrict e.g. the directory to be browsed for project members, only? It is currently all-or-nothing.

I really wish Atlassian takes GDPR serious and implements flexible GDPR settings into their products as the Space Privacy App currently allows in CF.

Unresolved privacy issue tickets since more than 15 years says a lot to me...

[Tom Shaffer]

Unresolved privacy issue tickets since more than 15 years says a lot to me...

In the "Champions" thread, which is meant for discussing which barriers are keeping customers from going into the cloud, there are a lot of "coming soons" and talks about the roadmap when compliance issues are brought up. Some of these have dates set a couple years away and we all know that issues can compound and cause even further delays.

I've only been an Atlassian customer for about 3 years now but a lot of the tickets I've looked into and have been following really haven't made much movement. Granted, it's with the server offerings (and not compliance-related) but I take lessons learned from the past when applying something in the future.

[kk]

really haven't made much movement

Some are more than 15 years old, like such super-complicated topics as being able to rename a group in Jira.

This would be hilarious in a fairy tale, but not so much in real life.

[Eric Girard]

We've been using the whole Atlassian ecosystem since 2009 (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, Service Desk).  We really enjoyed the flexibility to host within our infrastructure and integrate with our workflow.  

Switching to cloud would greatly increase our costs (we are a small team) that we cannot justify.  Our licenses are up to renewal in December, seems like this is the last year we do so and will have a year to evaluate and migrate to another solution. 

Feels like Atlassian is doing the same thing that Autodesk is doing with its customers : squeezing them for money while spinning it as an 'improvement'

On a personnal note, I use confluence at home (on-prem!!!!) for my personnal documentation : it is, no WAS cost effective for me.  I cannot justify the cost of the cloud for a personnal use

I registered this morning for a webinar for migration options to other solutions

I hate how Atlassian PR tries to spin complains and disappointed customers as a positive thing

[ralish]

Disappointed is an understatement. We've made a significant investment in Atlassian products over the years across several companies, and that investment now needs to be reconsidered. My view is that any continued investment cannot be justified.

No matter how you pitch your cloud offerings, some companies are always going to want to retain full control over their data, which extends to ensuring data is stored on their own servers. In some cases that may be due to regulatory constraints, while in others it may simply be due to internal risk assessments.

That your Datacenter offering is remaining available, despite surely sharing a lot in common with your cloud and self-hosted offering, suggests this move is purely motivated by monetary considerations. At a base price of $15,000 USD/year, the Datacenter option is not viable for many smaller organisations.

Just as Google ultimately "outgrew" its famous Don't Be Evil mantra, this corporate decision would seem to mark the precise time Atlassian decided it had outgrown its Don't Fuck the Customer ethos. That's a shame, and also a reflection on the overall corporate strategy and principles now present at the business.

[Tom Shaffer]

Yeah, the trust is gone. I can't even come to believe that the Data Center offering will have a long lifespan due to the latest investor's call (or letter?) where Atlassian is treating it like a stepping stone for those who are taking their time to go to their Cloud. But Atlassian swears each and every one will move to their Cloud. Soon, Atlassian will be cloud-only - and those who trusted them throughout this whole debacle will be all surprised while the rest of us just shake our heads as the writing's very clearly on the wall.

2021 and beyond: "100% new customers cloud-based"

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Atlassian-Cloud-Migration/Re-Re-To-all-Atlassian-server-champions-we-want-to-he/qaq-p/1513041/comment-id/594#M594 (it's on page 6 of that letter, if you're wondering)