In the Atlassian community, the date of February 15, 2024 is a well-known term. On this day, the change that Atlassian announced back in 2020 will culminate.
As of this date, Atlassian will no longer officially support the SERVER branch of the products, and so to an even greater extent, all of its energy will be devoted to the development of Cloud solutions and Data Center products.
Specifically, this is the end of support for the following products:
- Jira Software Server
- Jira Core Server
- Jira Service Management Server
- Confluence Server
- Bitbucket Server
- Crowd Server
- Bamboo Server
- Atlassian-built Server apps
In order to maintain a high level of security for your Atlassian products, keep them stable, and get updates that bring new functionality after this date, we recommend migrating to Atlassian products in the Cloud or moving to the Data Center.
Depending on the complexity of your current solution built on Server licensed products and based on the choice of target product hosting (i.e. Cloud vs. on-premise Data Center), this can be a quick or even a fairly lengthy change.
It’s good to be prepared and have a transition plan, February 2024 is coming up. If you don’t have your plan yet, there is no need to delay. But where to start and how to proceed? These are the questions we are happy to help you find the right answers to.
The alpha and omega will be choosing the target product type, i.e. whether to migrate to Cloud products or their Data Center alternatives. Two options, it doesn’t sound that complicated… but there are many factors that go into this important decision. Our experts can help you with your choice, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Transition to Data Center products
The move to Data Center is typically used by large companies that use Atlassian tools, such as Jira, in many processes and integrate to a variety of other tools. Typically, a lot of effort has gone into setting up Atlassian tools, and various customizations and use of add-ons from the Atlassian Marketplace platform are not uncommon.
In this case, Data Center is a preferable alternative as the transition from Server to DC is smooth and does not require major changes to the processes or add-ons themselves. The impact for end users is minimal, the Server and Data Center products are very similar, the average user practically does not see the difference.
In principle, it may even only be a change in licensing – if it is a move to a “single-node” Data Center. New licence keys are applied. However, be careful, data center licenses, unlike server licenses, can expire because it is an annual subscription. For Jira Software, a data center license starts at a package for 500 users. Compared to a server license, a lower number is not available.
It is of course more appropriate to switch to a “multi-node” infrastructure (cluster solution) in order to use the full potential of the Data Center products. However, even in this case there are no major changes in the actual processes implemented in Jira, the changes are mainly at the lower, hosting level and infrastructure.
Transition to Cloud products
Atlassian itself generally recommends switching to Cloud products as it puts a huge amount of effort into developing Cloud solutions.
This transition will thus affect most companies, which are usually smaller and medium-sized enterprises. However, enterprise clients are no exception, as their situation allows and they are happy to relieve their system administrators of managing and maintaining the Atlassian application itself.
Migration can take different forms. Basically, it can be a complete migration of all data or a partial migration, which will cover the transfer of key processes at the beginning and gradually, without time pressure, there will be room for the eventual transfer of less important data and processes.
Some clients have even used this necessary change as a jumping off point for a fresh start. In Cloud, they started building processes on a greenfield site, but with the experience gained from using Server products. This principle presents an opportunity to correct neglected areas or avoid historical configuration or process errors. Of course, this method is rather an exception as it requires more manual work.
Trying out Jira Cloud is easy. Atlassian even offers Jira Software Cloud with a basic feature set for up to 10 users for free. Free plans for Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management, Confluence and other popular Atlassian cloud products are also available.
From the perspective of regular users, such as Jira, the move to the Cloud is a change they will definitely notice. There are many changes compared to the Server product, but of course the philosophy and the main principle of work remains the same.
What is different is the user interface, the layout of panels and other elements.
Also working with add-ons may differ, their functionality may not exactly overlap with the possibilities of their Server variants although add-on vendors try in most cases to get as close as possible to the established options that users have been accustomed to.
The possibilities for more significant customization of Cloud products, especially in the front-end, are much smaller.
Last but not least, the administrators of Jira Cloud products themselves have to prepare for the changes as they will be faced with new areas of configuration or a different way of managing licenses and user accounts. However, the concerns are not misplaced, Atlassian provides clear training materials or online courses, but the main thing is that the administration is intuitive and logical.
Before making the decision to migrate to the Cloud, we recommend that you prepare an analysis that:
- answers the question of the need to consolidate project settings
- determines the time complexity of the migration
- gives information about the migration price and operational costs of your solution in the Cloud
- determines which parts of the current process are not supported or need to be modified for the Cloud
Staying on Server Products
Staying with Server products doesn’t just mean losing out on enriching the product with new functionality or performance improvements. The main sticking point is the end of patching holes and official support in case of problems.
Products exposed to public access from the Internet will be particularly at risk. Any security vulnerabilities discovered can thus be easily exploited for data theft or other compromise.
As an Atlassian partner, we can provide you with assistance and advice to minimize threats if you persist on Server products if your tools are not accessible from the public space.
A detailed comparison of Cloud and Data Center products is available on the Atlassian website: https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/compare-cloud-data-center
Samuel Titka
Atlassian Consultant
If you need assistance from experts with the implementation or configuration of Atlassian products, or if you need advice on how to use them most effectively in your company, please do not hesitate to contact us.
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