If you're feeling confused about migrating to Atlassian Cloud, you're not alone. One of the biggest unknowns when deciding whether to make the move to cloud is right for your business is what the investment looks like, or better yet, how much will not moving to cloud cost your organization in the long-term.

The standard question to start with when investing is, "What is the ROI?" When determining the cost of moving to the cloud, the benefits are easy to calculate. Cost savings, increased efficiency, improved security,  better environmental footprint, employee safety can all be calculated by the ROI.

Henry Mintzberg once said “Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.” By all means, determine your ROI. However, keep in mind that calculating the ROI doesn't answer the question, "What is the cost of not investing?"

In this article, we'll take a look at how to calculate your ROI, determine TCO, and examine the costs of not moving to cloud that organizations often overlook. 

Calculate Your ROI

The standard formula for ROI (Return on Investment) is:

(profit from investment - investment)/investment = ROI

When moving from a data center to cloud, the cost would be calculated as:

(Savings from moving to the cloud - cloud migration costs)/cloud migration costs

Savings from moving to cloud are calculated by determining your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Determine Your TCO

TCO is calculated by identifying all the costs associated with your current server infrastructure. Keep in mind that operational and fixed costs both need to be calculated. Some of these costs include: 

• Servers - The average lifespan of a server is 3-4 years.  
• Physical location - A location to house the servers
• Maintenance and support  for the servers - This includes supporting hardware, cooling systems, and all the parts needed to purchase, maintain and replace the servers
• Staff -
• Asset Management - IT staff time monitoring system
• Maintenance - Maintenance staff fixing and maintaining system
• Software licensing - Systems used to run your server infrastructure
• Energy bills - Impact that running servers has on energy bills
• Downtime for upgrades

Here is a great example of how one of our clients–Castlight Health–drastically reduced their TCO when moving to cloud. 

Consider Cloud Migration Costs

• Cloud services - Subscription fees from your cloud computing provider
• Internal resources - IT team (and any other staff members) working on the migration
• Software licensing - Any new software licenses acquired as well as forfeiture of licenses you already purchased but won’t be necessary anymore in cloud
• External resources - A team with cloud migration expertise to help make the transition as smooth as possible

Examine Not-investing Costs

• How far behind your competitors will you be? Apps are being developed and strategic partners are investing in cloud-first solutions.
• How much is downtime costing you? Consumers want 24/7 immediate results.  
1. Lost sales revenue
2. Lost employee productivity
3. Damaged reputation with customers and key stakeholders
4. Data loss 
5. Potential compliance/regulatory penalties
• How will the supply chain affect my data center operations? Are you relying on others to have the products needed in stock? The recent semiconductor shortage due to Covid is a prime example. 
• What opportunity costs am I missing?  According to Investopedia, Opportunity Cost is listed as the “potential benefits one misses out on when choosing one alternative over another”.  Could your IT costs be transformed from a cost center to a consumption based revenue source?
• What is the cost of scalability?

The Price You'll Pay 

CEO's must look at a changed and continuously evolved business landscape. Seizing near term revenue opportunities without the upfront CapEx or long-term support costs or quickly winding down without worry about unused infrastructure helps you navigate today's digital economy. The price you'll pay is more than just ROI. It is the potential cost of opportunity lost, stagnation, and falling behind in the rapidly changing world. Strategic thinking means looking at ROI and opportunity and considering your long term vision. 

With Atlassian's Server quickly approaching end of life, cloud migrations–especially their costs– are top of mind in the Atlassian community. If you are overwhelmed or confused about how much an Atlassian Cloud migration will cost you, your best bet is to bring in an Atlassian Cloud Specialized Partner to help guide you through every step of the process. Praecipio Consulting proudly holds a 100% migration success rate thanks to our highly customized approach that involves a diligent planning process and rigorous testing. Reach out to our team of cloud migration experts, and we'll help you determine costs, next steps, and what it will take to migrate your organization to Atlassian Cloud.

Software and data have become the most valuable resources for modern businesses. As such, a central part of your overall business strategy should be fully harnessing the infrastructure on which you host your applications and data. Identifying the right hosting platform – like Atlassian, AWS, or another – enables organizations to remain flexible. It helps them scale successfully, meet their objectives more quickly, and respond with agility to business trends.

Not all businesses are created equally, which is why a “one-size-fits-all” hosting solution doesn’t exist. 

In this article, we’ll compare the benefits and drawbacks of hosting on the cloud vs. on-premises and specifically related to Atlassian Cloud vs. Data Center. Additionally, we provide insight to help you make an informed decision about which is the best fit for your business.

Cloud Versus On-Premise Data Center

Cloud software is hosted on a third party’s infrastructure and is accessible to an organization through a web server. The underlying hardware is often widely geographically distributed and complies with global regulations.

Traditionally, on-premise software was installed locally on data centers run by the organization. This model of data center has evolved to include “on-premise” data centers that use hybrid or outsourced infrastructures, including co-located servers running your apps, VMs, or private clouds. Although the servers aren’t on a company’s premises, the hardware is physically accessible and on-premises that you can visit and inspect.

Atlassian offers both categories of products for enterprise teams: Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center. First, let's introduce the options.

Atlassian Cloud

Atlassian Cloud is a delivery model for Atlassian products that host software on Atlassian’s globally distributed infrastructure. It enables your company to stay agile and invest more in your core business by freeing up your resources from having to manage security, upgrades, and maintenance. 

Atlassian offers a suite of collaborative tools to get work done at scale in a hosted environment. These tools include Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Trello, Confluence, and Bamboo just to name a few.

Atlassian Data Center

Atlassian Data Center is a self-managed solution that lets you control product hosting, ensure maintenance, and perform version upgrades yourselves. Unlike Atlassian Cloud, your company is responsible for managing security, upgrades, and maintenance, but you have the access and flexibility to build a custom-tailored solution. Atlassian Data Center also offers a similar suite of tools for teams to the one available on Atlassian Cloud.

In early 2021, Atlassian began the process of ending support for Atlassian Server, leaving Data Center as the only self-hosted option for organizations joining the Atlassian platform. Organizations with existing licenses can continue to use Server, but support for Atlassian Server products is scheduled for early 2024.

Breaking Down Pros and Cons

Let’s discuss the differences in control and support, ease of deployment, and cost benefits between hosting software in the cloud and on-premise.

Control and Support

Cloud environments are managed by a vendor that offers support, monitoring, and built-in reliability functions. These environments are highly available and can be set up quickly.

On-premise hosting, on the other hand, is controlled by the organization. This means that you can customize your systems and choose which tools to deploy. But this also gives you or an external partner the responsibility of managing them effectively.

Ease of Deployment

Atlassian Cloud and Data Center both present unique challenges when setting up infrastructure.

Cloud infrastructure is the simpler option when starting fresh with a new instance, but any other type of migration requires more careful planning and preparation. Setting up the new instance is normally simple, as it only requires you to sign up for a subscription, choose your configurations and then your new software is in place almost immediately and Atlassian takes care of any installation.

However, if you need to migrate an existing instance — which entails your users, apps, and data — you’ll be balancing cost, downtime, and complexity. We don’t recommend doing a cloud migration on your own, so it’s important to bring on an Atlassian Solution Partner to help successfully guide you through the migration process. 

In contrast, deploying applications on-premise involves setting up new hardware or configuring your existing hardware before you install any software. It also requires you to perform maintenance on your hardware and ensure software is updated and patched.

Even if you choose to deploy your application on a non-clustered architecture, much of this work is time-consuming and requires additional specialized staff. A more complex setup provides all the performance, scalability, and reliability you’d expect from a clustered architecture, but demands a correspondingly greater investment and more work.

To successfully deploy on-premises, you need to hire staff — not only to build and deploy your infrastructure but also to maintain it and ensure it meets regulatory requirements. You then need to document and benchmark your existing processes before optimizing your application.

Testing your deployment is the most intensive part of a deployment or migration. It can take 3 to 6 months to fully test your application for functionality, performance, and integration, after which your team is then responsible for ongoing infrastructure monitoring.

If you decide to hybridize your Data Center infrastructure, you can deploy Atlassian Data Center via cloud hosting infrastructure, like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Although this removes the burden of physical server maintenance, migrating is still a work-intensive and lengthy procedure.

Cost

Cloud service models free you from the expense of hardware, software, and additional IT professionals. Many businesses, especially startups and small companies, choose this option for its low upfront cost. Cloud hosting’s excellent scalability and high availability are expensive features to achieve in on-premise solutions. You don’t need to purchase the infrastructure (capital expense) with cloud environments — you’re only left to deal with operational expenses.

Atlassian Cloud's monthly or annual subscription model can help organizations save money by eliminating upfront infrastructure purchases. A subscription also includes frequent updates to maintain up-to-date security features, which can become a significant recurring cost if your organization is responsible for its own updates. Additionally, Atlassian works around the clock to ensure that your data is secure, so once again, once less cost that your business has to incur. 

On the other hand, some organizations may have specialized needs that require data to remain within their jurisdiction. These companies must usually purchase and maintain all their hardware, ranging from the obvious — like servers, routers, and networking software — to the less obvious and often surprisingly expensive — like HVAC, fire suppression, and backup power solutions. In general, on-premise systems require significantly more upfront capital than cloud solutions.

Although it gives you precise control over your deployment, Atlassian Data Center requires an investment in staff. Even if you decide to run a hybrid architecture and avoid the costs of maintaining physical servers, your team still needs to maintain your infrastructure’s software layer. Security patches, integrations, and network performance become your organization’s responsibility. 

Comparing Atlassian Cloud and Data Center

Let’s look a little more closely at Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center. We’ll evaluate them based on a few factors that most organizations prioritize.

Time and Expense of Initial Setup

Depending on the scale of your infrastructure, setting up an on-premise architecture could take weeks. You need to install and configure all of the Atlassian products and infrastructure you need, and then migrate any data you currently have. You’ll need to do this for every product.

Atlassian Cloud is quicker to set up because Atlassian manages everything for you. If you are starting fresh with a completely new Atlassian instance, you could begin using your Cloud infrastructure within minutes — or seconds, if you use SSO.

If you are migrating your Atlassian instance to Cloud, things get a bit more challenging. While Atlassian itself provides free tools to support your team through the migration process, including the  Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket migration assistant resources. However, even with this help from these tools, cloud migrations present unexpected roadblocks — especially during more complex or specialized migrations.

That’s why we recommend going a step further and getting help from an Atlassian Solution Partner. An Atlassian Specialized Partner in Cloud, like Praecipio Consulting, guides you through the entire migration process, sharing their proven expertise to accelerate your journey to cloud. For example, during a migration with Praecipio Consulting, any legacy or duplicate tooling is adjusted and your architecture is cleaned up, giving you peace of mind and a refreshed final product at a lower cost than if you were to complete the move yourselves.

Skills and Expertise Required to Deploy and Maintain

Atlassian Cloud customers don’t need to manage instances because Atlassian provides and maintains the infrastructure. Cloud services are updated automatically, so you don't have to perform regular maintenance updates or worry about version compatibility.

At the other end of the spectrum, Atlassian Data Center offers more customization options, but it requires a higher level of expertise to manage successfully. You’ll need dedicated internal resources and skilled personnel to install, configure, upgrade and maintain instances.

Security

Atlassian handles all security concerns in its Cloud offering at the network, server, and application levels. This offering includes compliance with a broad set of industry standards, network security scans of both internal and external infrastructure, and regular penetration testing.

One of the main features of an on-premise setup is the additional control you have over your data. When using Atlassian Data Center, you have control over hardware and network security, but Atlassian manages application-level security for you.

Scalability Potential

Atlassian Cloud is inherently much more scalable than a Data Center. Atlassian Data Center also offers a solution with scaling potential, but the scalability is limited to the infrastructure deployed.

When using Atlassian Data Center, you need to forecast and build out capacity ahead of time to meet your predicted peaks. Many data centers are somewhat capable of being refitted to scale vertically, but horizontal scaling demands more space and power. You can easily scale out horizontally using Atlassian Cloud to get higher throughput and configure the environment to accommodate additional resources as needed.

Ability to Work Remotely

Atlassian Cloud is a hosted platform that you can use from anywhere, at any time. Team members can easily access Jira issues, Confluence pages, Bitbucket repositories, and other tools remotely from anywhere around the globe.

Atlassian Cloud also allows you to have teams of any size in the cloud and on-premis, working together in real-time. Employees working remotely can collaborate and access company products securely from mobile apps and browsers without signing in to a VPN. 

Data Center lets you stay flexible while retaining control over the security and stability of your instances. You can freely add nodes to your cluster to handle large numbers of geographically distributed users, and then use built-in features like rate limiting to prevent instability caused by external tools, automations, and infrastructure quirks outside of your organization’s control.

You can alleviate some of these concerns by using a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce peak load times on application instances running on Atlassian Data Center. This increase in performance extends to all your users, not just those who are geographically distant from your servers.

Cloud

A business with fluctuating needs requires a tiered pricing solution based on the number of users who access an instance in a certain period.

Organizations often have information spread across several different platforms. Your business may have messages on Slack, spreadsheets in Excel, and other documents in Google Docs. For example, you can bring these resources together using dynamic pages in Confluence Cloud to distribute communication materials and create company policies and marketing plans.

Confluence Cloud is used by many companies — such as Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Udemy — to create collaborative workspaces and consolidate information into unified dashboards.

Data Center 

In contrast, Data Center is better suited for organizations looking to meet specialized needs. It allows businesses to access their system’s back end and databases and create tailored integrations and add-ons.

For example, if you use Jira Service Management Cloud, you’re limited to specific customizations in some Jira plugin features, such as BigPicture Dashboard Gadgets or ScriptRunner scripting functions. However, you can use and freely customize these plugins by using them on Jira Service Management Data Center. 

Organizations that want to collaborate with their teams at a high velocity while meeting strict compliance standards can use Jira Service Management Data Center. Instead of having to build in-house ITSM systems, JSM Data Center acts as a single source of truth and allows you to extract and share data between teams without the complex processes of a conventional ITSM platform.

Conclusion

Unless an organization fully understands what it needs from its infrastructure and how the business might grow in the future, it can be difficult to determine whether to move everything to the cloud or run production systems in a data center. To evaluate how you can best serve your customers and employees, you must weigh the increased control and flexibility of Atlassian Data Center against the added and resource investment of staying out of the Cloud. Outside of specialized use cases, it’s often more beneficial to switch over to Atlassian Cloud.

Avoiding the switch to cloud will be more difficult to justify in a couple of years as support for Atlassian Server ends. So, organizations looking for longevity have an even stronger incentive to begin their migrations soon.

Although migrations have a reputation as formidable undertakings, there’s no need for them to be overwhelming. The tools provided by Atlassian offer a good starting point for simple migrations if your IT department is provisioned to handle the risks.

However, it’s worth using an Atlassian Solution Partner like Praecipio Consulting to help with your migration. Experienced migration experts provide peace of mind by helping you mitigate potential risks and by providing support throughout the entire process, from deciding on the best migration strategy to onboarding users in the days following a migration.

If your organization is ready to migrate to Atlassian Cloud or Data Center, reach out to the Praecipio Consulting team to learn how we can help you achieve a successful migration.

We get it. Migrating to the cloud can seem daunting. But it doesn't need to be. And, with Atlassian Server approaching end-of-life, the time to start preparing for your Atlassian Cloud Migration is now. In this blog you'll learn about the 6-step process Praecipio Consulting follows and how we've maintained a 100% cloud migration success rate for over 15 years.

In the cloud, companies have an increased capability to scale efficiently, increased security, reduced downtime, and several other benefits. You can learn more about why you should be migrating to the cloud in 2022 in this blog.

Every Atlassian Cloud Migration is unique, but success is within your reach if you set yourself up for success with a thorough and well-thought-out plan. You can also download the 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration eBook, where we go into a bit more detail about the steps and our partnership with Castlight Health.

1. Assess Your Applications

You will need to perform a deep analysis of your Atlassian application in the initial phases. In the assess phase, review all of the applications and the add-ons within the applications. You'll need to determine which applications are business-critical, optional, no longer in use, etc. Additionally, you'll need to develop an understanding of how these applications are used.

Not all applications are available in Cloud. The how is essential for determining if there are potential replacements. You don't want to experience any unexpected loss of functionality after the migration. If there are apps that are not yet available in Cloud, research any alternatives and implement these during your testing phase to ensure the functionality is adequate.

Another critical component to the assess phase is carefully considering any external integration. Any external configurations will need to be reconfigured as the base URL will be changed along with how Cloud performs API authentications.

2. Plan for Success

Once your assessment is completed and you have a good understanding of what will be migrated and what will be replaced, it is time to plan the migration. The first step in your planning phase will be deciding if you need Atlassian Access. Atlassian access provided centralized, enterprise-grade security across all Atlassian Cloud products.

If your organization uses a cloud identity provider, Atlassian Access can integrate directly. After the decision for Atlassian Access is determined, you should next set up your "organization" in Cloud. The organization provides the ability to view and manage all of your users in one place and leverage security features such as SAML SSO. Once the organization has been established, verify the company domain. This can be achieved by following the documentation: Verify a Domain to Manage Accounts.

Now that your Cloud site is set up and configured, it is time to choose a migration strategy. You can read this blog to learn about 4 Cloud Migration Strategies and their pros and cons.

3. Prepare Your Instance

In the Prep phase, it's important not to cut any corners. Prepping your migration can take weeks to accomplish; however, it's one of the most critical components to a successful migration. Therefore, you'll want to consult with your teams and the key stakeholders of your server instances.

Opening the lines of communication with these users will promote a smooth migration with minimal disruption in their work. After these teams are on board, you will want to check your current server version to ensure you are on a supported version of the server before attempting the migration. Then, with the assessment in hand, begin to clean up any data in the server instance.

In continuing to prepare your Cloud site, install any cloud app that will be used post-migration. Having these apps in place prior to the migration is essential so that the data can be brought over correctly during the migration event. Begin to put together an initial runbook with a step-by-step checklist of all the items that will take place, along with details of each of these steps. Document the estimated time that each step will take as well. The runbook and the timeline may change during the testing phase.

4. Test Everything

In the testing phase, you'll want to have done everything you can to prepare your instance for a successful migration. It will be critical to have a backup of your data. Regardless of any migration strategy chosen, you will want to have a backup of your server instance. Performing rounds of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is vital to a successful migration.

Establish a list of users and teams that will navigate to a "migrated" cloud instance and have these users complete the day-to-day tasks that they would typically complete to do their work as completed. Any uncovered issues should be documented, reviewed, and the solutions added to the runbook. It is recommended that there be several test runs performed until the migration is successful, the runbook is completed, and all UAT users confirm functionality.

Once the tests are completed, prepare any training materials that users will need or find beneficial post-migration. Next, formulate a comprehensive communication plan and begin to execute this plan. Inform your users when this migration will occur, what downtime they can expect, how they can access the new site, how they will sign in, who they can contact in case of any issues, and provide any materials they can review to get acclimated with the Cloud environment.

5. Migrate Your Data

You are now ready for the Migration phase. During this phase, you will fix any last-minute issues and run through your runbook to begin to migrate your users and data. At this stage, be sure to set your server instance in "read-only" to prevent changes made during the migration. Next, perform the migration of the data apps, and begin QA once completed.

6. Launch Your Instance

Finally, the Launch phase. You have successfully migrated to the Cloud, now continue Cloud support and ensure that your users are successful.

Welcome your team to the cloud, communicate to the stakeholders that the migration was successful, be evident in the business decision to move to the Cloud, and provide the materials they will need to succeed in their job function. Set aside office hours to discuss and review any issues your end users may have. Once problems have been resolved or become fewer, you may begin to transition into a maintenance phase versus support.

Atlassian Cloud Migrations are complex, and you can do them yourself. However, we recommend choosing a partner with a history of success and expertise in helping companies like yours migrate to the Atlassian Cloud. Contact us today if you'd like to learn more and get started.

FREE EBOOK: 6 STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL ATLASSIAN CLOUD MIGRATION

Learn how to assess, plan, and launch a successful Atlassian Cloud Migration with our new eBook. We explore what you should expect before migrating, avoid common mistakes, and how we partnered with Castlight Health to guide them through successful cloud migration. Learn how we've maintained a 100% cloud migration success rate, download our 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration eBook today.

Since 2021, Atlassian users across the globe have inquired about Atlassian Cloud products. In talking with multiple clients and users, the inevitable questions are 1) how do Cloud products differ from Server and Data Center and 2) what happens during a migration? 

First, for Atlassian Cloud products, the user interface is slightly different, not to mention downtime for database or application configuration changes such as upgrades are a thing of the past. While there are innumerable differences between the Cloud experience vs. your current Server experience, let’s focus on some of the distinctions that are explicitly associated with the migration experience and, most importantly, the transfer of data.

Atlassian’s Cloud Migration Assistant

As applications such as Jira and Confluence have been upgraded, most system administrators have seen an added System menu item of “Migrate to Cloud.” In three easy steps, one would assess applications, prepare applications, and migrate data. Easy-peezy, lemon squeezy. Here the migration process is focused on cleaning up any process transfers using the Cloud Migration Assistant, often referred to as JCMA (Jira) or CCMA (Confluence), etc. 

This is Atlassian’s free tool that migrates configurations along with data to get you up and running in the cloud smoothly. As an administrator, this would be my preferred option for an organization. The ideal migration would be the simple push of a button, waiting on the data to transfer into the cloud, and then team members fluidly begin work.

The reality is your migration experience and level of effort required is determined by your organization’s governance practices and the complexity of your environment, specifically your use of and reliance on add-on applications. Four years ago, the vendor app space was limited. Then, it was easy to take a cursory glance at available options and make the decision to stay with your on-premises environment. Today, the vendor app space has covered most use cases. It is less about the number of applications available to the cloud instances than nuanced custom use cases.

Assessing Your Applications

A full review of vendor applications is one of the first steps your organization should complete before you consider moving to Atlassian Cloud. Your organization should understand how the app is used, by how many people, and if it is a transferrable application. In some frequent use cases, native cloud functionality might prove to be a more viable option, as it serves as a way to improve your current processes and makes your configurations less complicated. Migration plans need to be made around apps that are part of essential functions. Therefore, it is imperative to work with key stakeholders regarding their specific use cases. 

It is also essential to review and understand your specific use case during your migration journey. More mature Jira applications often have very embedded processes that have been tailored to years of adoption. As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, Praecipio Consulting has had a hand in these types of customizations. This can be an eye-opening experience for an organization because oftentimes they uncover that administration has been left to developers or super users without governance, and the reality is that customizations built using homegrown scripts need to be closely evaluated.  

Cloud Migration Case Study

For example, working with a marketing organization, we completed a cursory review of its workflows. In reviewing the workflows, we found custom scripts that were doing basic permission functions, which could have been controlled through update permissions schemes, conditions, and validators common to more advanced workflows. The scripts themselves were not problematic in the on-premises instance. 

However, the lack of administrative knowledge led to a less than ideal practice, and when moving to cloud, they would need to be built out using best practices for an easy transfer of data and fluid transition in use. Finding solutions for custom development work is worked through before the migration, which makes the migration easier and also allows team members time to get acquainted with the prescribed best practices and changes.

Free eBook: 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration

Learn how to assess, plan, and launch a successful Atlassian Cloud Migration with our new eBook. We explore what you should expect before migrating, how to avoid common mistakes, and how we partnered with Castlight Health to guide them through a successful cloud migration. Learn how we've maintained a 100% cloud migration success rate, download our 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration eBook today.

Conclusion

The ideal situation for each organization is to have a seamless experience between Server and Cloud utilization. Depending on their on-premises version, there could be a need to deploy change management plans to ease user apprehension of the new look of their Atlassian applications. While the risk is low, the appetite for change can vary.

Hopefully, you have been working closely with the stakeholders in preparing them for these changes well before the actual migration. For most organizations, the “heavy lifting” happens in preparation before the actual migration. For large organizations, this could be a slow and daunting process.  

Whatever your journey to the cloud may be, it does not have to be done alone. Praecipio Consulting is an Official Cloud Specialized Partner in Atlassian Cloud migrations and can assist with the actual migration and prepare the organization for life after Server products.

Learn more about why you should be migrating to cloud in 2022 by checking out this blog. Also, if you’re interested in learning how Praecipio Consulting maintains a 100% Cloud Migration success rate, you should reach out to us here.

You have decided that moving to Cloud is the right decision for the future of your Atlassian products. Now, how do you go about doing so? Migrating to the Atlassian Cloud can be a complex process that could have a big impact on users, data integrity, and system performance, so there needs to be a strategy in place to meet any business requirements specific to your organization and industry.

We will cover the 4 cloud migration strategies you can implement when moving to Atlassian Cloud. Note the importance of planning properly for the cloud migration, deciding on your migration strategy, and carrying out that strategy first requires an assessment of your Atlassian footprint. 

Clean-Up and Migrate

When we use this strategy, we are looking at evaluating your source instance and cleaning up anything that may not be deemed necessary to migrate. All the necessary data is then migrated to the cloud at once while leaving behind items in the server for reference.

Pros:

• Only one migration outage
• Can reduce the time of the outage
• End up with an improved instance
• Potential performance improvements
• Reduce costs

Cons:

• The outage window may be longer than other methods due to the size of the data
• Requires additional time to clean and prepare the instance

As-Is Migration

Migrate your entire instance at once with one migration outage. This includes all instance data and users.

Pros:

• Reduced costs
• Timeline is reduced
• Less effort and simpler process
• One migration window
• Can migrate Service Management and Advanced Roadmaps

Cons:

• Increased downtime depending on the size of the instance
• Unnecessary data and users may be moved to the cloud increasing cost and complexity

Phased Migration

With a phased migration, we take the approach of cleaning and migrating but with an extended timeline and without having to move everything at once. Users and instance data are moved depending on a scheduled plan. 

Pros:

• Outage times are reduced
• Possible phased user onboarding
• Cleanup can happen while migrating
• Easier phased adoption of Atlassian Cloud

Cons:

• Does not support Service Management and Advanced Road maps
• May support fewer third-party apps
• Overall longer process may increase the cost
• Multiple outages
• Increased complexity
• May require a third-party app to meet business requirements

Clean Sweep

If on-prem (server or DC) data is not required and teams want to start using the cloud right away, starting fresh on a brand new instance may be the simplest of strategies.

Pros:

• No downtime required
• Server can be kept for closing out projects or archiving
• Easier to onboard new teams
• Allows clean slate to improve processes and implement new things

Cons:

• Old on-prem data will not be available on the Cloud instance

Conclusion

Every company and industry has different needs, but our experts have the experience necessary to make yours easy and efficient. If you are considering a move to Atlassian Cloud but are worried about how this new environment will impact your mission-critical apps and add-ons being, we’re here to help!

Free eBook: 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration

There are 6 steps to any successful Atlassian Cloud Migration process. We've created an eBook to explore each step in detail and demonstrate how we've maintained a 100% migration success rate. Download our 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration eBook here.

Want to learn more about the Cloud Migration process? Check out this blogs on the Pros and Cons of Cloud Migration and this on 4 Things to Look Out for When Migrating to Atlassian Cloud.

Migrating to the cloud can be a challenging move for any organization: there are many moving pieces to keep track of, and with the threat of negatively affecting both internal and front-facing operations, failure is not an option! Here are some key blockers to keep in mind when migrating to Atlassian Cloud from on-premise instances, so that you can review ahead of time just how prepared for a successful migration your company is:

• User Management
• Automations
• Size of Attachments
• Apps

User Management

User Management and how users are set up is a major difference when operating in Atlassian Cloud versus on premise. This is an important obstacle to understand and address, as the approaches for user management are different between cloud and on-premise. Key to this is how users are created and managed; equally important is identifying any users with missing or duplicate email addresses, since these cause problems with data integrity and users being able to use Filters and Queues in Atlassian Cloud. 

Automation

Automations are critical to research, as some automations may not be functional or even allowed in Atlassian Cloud: these will need to be identified and assessed to determine the balance between the value they bring and the level of effort of recreating them. 

Attachments

Size of Attachments becomes critical when using the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant, as this does not support migrating Jira Service Desk projects, which may require importing data via Site Import that forces attachments to be uploaded separately in 5 GB chunks, one chunk at a time. This alone will drive the migration of attachments to exceed a typical outage window, as the Site Import process must first conclude prior to uploading attachments. 

Jira Service Management utilization is tied to the size of the attachments as noted above. While JSM is used heavily it is currently not able to be migrated using the Jira Cloud Migration tool. With that being said this drives the use of site import. With this comes having to migrate the users and attachments separately. This becomes more moving parts during the migration outage and the coordination and timing will become even more critical.  

Apps

Jira Suite Utilities (JSU) / Jira Miscellaneous Workflow Extension (JMWE) / Scriptrunner are apps available in the Atlassian Marketplace that may be used in one or more of your current workflows. While these apps have helped to drive the creation of workflows and processes to automate certain transitions or enforce proper data collection, there is also no current migration pathway to Atlassian Cloud. While JSU has become part of the native cloud, JSU along with the other two apps must be manually fixed in all workflows migrated up to the cloud. You must run a query on your on premise data base to ensure you map out all transitions affected by the apps. Then once the migration to cloud is complete, they must be reviewed and recreated manually to ensure they are all working properly. Where possible utilizing the out of the box options, that mimic JSU, can help to move away from at least one app. 

Specific to Scriptrunner, one common scenario is the use of it in filters can cause them to no longer function, potentially causing boards and dashboard to render incorrectly. These filters must be rewritten using the Scriptrunner Enhanced Search functionality. One good example is any filter that contains the phrase "issueFunction not in" will need be rewritten as "NOT issueFunction in". It would be advisable, when doing the migration to Cloud, to open a ticket with the vendors for advise on how to fix scenarios with JQL that worked in Server/Data Center that no longer work "as-is" in Cloud.

Overall these key obstacles will get you on the correct path to understanding what you know will need to be done in preparation for starting the migration. This by no means is a complete list of the only obstacles that you can encounter, but we hope it will help you to be proactive in fixing obstacles before they become a blocker to the migration.

We are Atlassian experts, and understand how the move to cloud can be fraught with unpleasant surprises. If you have any questions, or are in need of professional assistance, contact us, we would love to help!