Atlassian Server is going into retirement
On February 15, 2024, Atlassian's server suite will be reaching its End-of-Life (EOL), and its cloud-based successors will usher in a new era. Personally, I like to picture this scenario as being like the end of a storied life. With all their digital possessions migrated to the cloud, the retired Atlassian products can spend the next years of their life relaxing and sharing their stories of old, such as when $10 licenses and desktop-installed Jira were the norm.
It’s a fun analogy, but the truth is that there are still a lot of server installations out there that aren’t ready to retire. Even now, they’re still working hard and being used daily by their users–some even being mission-critical to the organizations that use them.
What the End-of-Life for Atlassian Server means for you
If you’re an Atlassian Server user, you’ll be happy to hear that any licenses you have for Server products will still keep running as normal. What will be changing, though, is that you won’t receive support, security patches, or updates after February 15, 2024. Not only that, but you’ll no longer be able to change your user tier or add any Marketplace Apps.
But if your instance is running securely behind the firewall and you’re willing to run the risk of running your Server products unsupported, then there’s nothing stopping you from running on Server for the years to come.
What are the options?
Atlassian Cloud
The obvious choice organizations tend to go for is migrating over to Atlassian’s cloud platform, which is scalable, secure, and robust. Best of all, you don’t need to upgrade or patch it, as Atlassian takes care of all of that for you.
Smaller migrations can be performed on your own, but larger ones can be a real challenge. Thankfully, Atlassian solution partners (like us) can help you with your migrations, so you don’t have to do them all by yourself.
There’s been a lot of investment in Atlassian Cloud products over the last few years, so there are a lot of exciting opportunities out there to use Atlassian’s tools in new ways in order to help transform your business. While you may feel like you’re being forced to move from Server because of its EOL, the benefits of the cloud can make this short-term effort worthwhile. Once you’re on the Atlassian Cloud platform, there’s also a growing suite of new products that can help power your business even further, including:
- Jira Work Management (JWM)
Created for non-development business teams to help them visualize and manage their work. - Jira Product Discovery
Built to transparently manage product ideas, helping you prioritize which ones should be developed and which should not. - Atlas
Creates a project repository for an organization so everyone can see what projects are being worked on, why they’re valuable, who is working on them, and how they’re progressing. - Compass
A component registry and Developer Experience product that enables developers to effectively find out about existing components and track their quality through DORA metrics. - OpsGenie, StatusPage and Halp
These provide a comprehensive service management and support suite for customer engagement, which helps keep you informed of service status and handle incidents efficiently. - Analytics
Helps you visualize data across Atlassian products and other data sources.
Atlassian Cloud also provides additional features and integration possibilities that can benefit end-users, such as Smart Links, Roadmaps, Automations, and Open DevOps.
Data Center
If you want to keep your own hardware running and manage the software and infrastructure yourself, you can always swap to a Data Center subscription license. Acquiring one is usually just a matter of purchasing and applying the license key, but you should double-check this with your solution partner first. Data Center user tiers have a minimum of 500 users, so this sometimes isn’t a cost-effective solution. It does, however, give you support, security patches, and other Data Center features. Data Center is also an option if you aren’t ready to make the move to the cloud or simply don’t have time to do a cloud migration.
Wishing Atlassian Server a happy retirement
Atlassian Server has been a much-loved product, and I’ve personally spent many a long evening upgrading it or doing other maintenance tasks. I know the retirement celebration party will be quite an event, so let’s all raise a glass on February 15 to celebrate the working life of these amazing products and a toast to the exciting future the cloud will be bringing.
We’re here to discuss your future tools strategy with you. If you would like to discuss Atlassian Cloud migrations, the pros and cons of adopting the cloud, or discuss your options in more detail, please get in touch with us to book a tools strategy call.
Published: Jan 30, 2024
