Atlassian Cloud vs. Atlassian Data Center

February 15th 2022 marked the second milestone on Atlassian’s roadmap to the end of its Server edition, with Data Center (DC) and Server advantaged plans increasing as part of a gradual rise to list pricing.

Jira Service Management reached list pricing at all tiers with this change, as did several Server tiers across Jira Software, Confluence, and Jira Core. This date also saw the end of user tier upgrades and downgrades for Server licensing, an end in the ability to upgrade or downgrade user tiers, and new feature developments on Server were discontinued, except for security bug fixes for critical vulnerabilities.

The end of the Server edition means that businesses that have maintained instances on their own or via third-party servers must choose between moving their infrastructure to Atlassian Cloud or changing their model to Data Center. In this post, we explore which is more beneficial by comparing functionality and pricing.

Products available in Atlassian Data Center and Atlassian Cloud

Atlassian Data Center vs Cloud

When to consider Atlassian Cloud?

According to Atlassian...

Your journey from Server to Cloud will depend on a few factors, such as the apps you want to migrate, the size and complexity of your data, and your budget and time frame. In general, enterprise migrations require more time and planning, whereas smaller migrations can be quick and simple.

Cloud products are suited to most businesses, enabling them to:

• Get access to the latest features and functionality.
• Accelerate digital transformation plans and enable business agility with continuous improvements to functionality.
• Benefit from real-time security updates and a team of Atlassian experts working around the clock to keep data secure.
• Enable globally distributed teamwork with products that can be accessed securely from any browser or mobile app without the need for a VPN (being a SaaS solution).
• Eliminate manual upgrades and software maintenance to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Check out Atlassian’s quarterly updates on the latest features in Cloud.

When to consider Atlassian Data Center?

The complexity of a DC migration depends on your choice of architecture and infrastructure and your overall migration goals.

• Migrating to a non-clustered DC deployment is simple; since your underlying infrastructure doesn’t change, you must upgrade to the latest long-term support release and upgrade your product license, as well as any app licenses to versions from July 2020 onwards.
• Migrating to a clustered Data Center deployment (needed for high availability) requires additional infrastructure and more complex deployment topology. Note that additional costs and planning are required.
• Migrating from physical hardware to Data Center on a cloud service such as AWS or Azure, or moving to an orchestrated deployment using Kubernetes or Docker, takes more time and planning, similar to the effort required for cloud migrations.

For those with a business risk that prevents them from moving to Cloud right now, we suggest moving to Data Center.

DC will continue to be a performant and reliable offering to support your growth with Atlassian. Choose it if your:

• Product must comply with a regulatory standard that’s not on the Atlassian Cloud roadmap.
• Product data is mandated to remain in a self-managed environment.
• Performance and scale are more important than features and functionality.

Scalability in Atlassian Data Center and Atlassian Cloud

Data Center

Cloud

System availability in Atlassian Data Center and Cloud

Data Center

Cloud

Licensing costs for Atlassian Data Center and Atlassian Cloud

Data Center

Cloud

Atlassian Data Center and Cloud changes live and pending

Data Center

Bundled apps are now available natively in Atlassian’s DC offering. Unlocking this functionality requires customers to either install a compatible version of the app through the Marketplace or upgrade to the latest version of Data Center with the app included.

       – Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Portfolio for Jira) in Jira Software DC.

       – Team Calendars for Confluence in Confluence Data Center.

       – Analytics for Confluence in Confluence Data Center.

       – Insight Asset Management in Jira Service Management Data Center.

       – Insight Discovery in Jira Service Management Data Center.

DC price changes – Atlassian has increased the price of both new and existing Data Center subscriptions to reflect the value of these investments.

Priority Support bundle – Priority Support is to be included with all Data Center subscriptions (except Bitbucket below 251 users).

Data Center loyalty discount – Server to Data Center crossgrade credits are to be discontinued and replaced with the Data Center loyalty discount. This helps customers transition to Data Center as existing Server customers get a multi-year discount on Data Center licensing. Server customers migrating to Data Center are eligible for a loyalty discount on all Data Center products. This discount percentage will decrease every year from July 2022 until 2024.

– Bamboo Data Center.

Atlassian Cloud

– Data residency update. Atlassian is committed to making data residency options available for all customers planning to migrate to the Cloud.

– The Cloud Enterprise plan.

– Advanced change management.

Release tracks: Cloud Enterprise admins get more flexibility to manage product releases and batching duration. With batch and control Cloud releases to end-users, admins have the time to learn new updates, test existing workflows and configurations, and prepare training and support for their users.

Sandbox: Enables admins with a safe, isolated sandbox environment to test apps and preview changes before rolling them out to their production environment. Premium and Enterprise plan customers can initiate one sandbox per product instance for as many instances as they have, for example, if a customer has 5 JSW Enterprise sites, they can spin up one sandbox for each site for a total of 5 sandboxes.

-Data cloning; the ability to copy data from production to sandbox will also be available for Jira Software and Confluence soon.

– Cloud bundled apps.

Insight and Insight Discovery: Insight Discovery is a free Atlassian Marketplace app to be used with Insight on a site that has Jira Service Management Premium or Enterprise licensing users.

Team Calendars: Team Calendars for Confluence Cloud is now a standard feature of Confluence Cloud Premium, and is no longer available for purchase as a separate add-on to Confluence.

Atlassian Data Center or Atlassian Cloud?

When deciding between Data Center or Cloud, there’s a lot to consider, but as an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, we are available to guide you through the best possible solution for your unique requirements.