Server licensing to end

Atlassian have been moving towards being a cloud-first company. We have noticed this, with more customers opting for Atlassian Cloud licenses, including large enterprises who would have traditionally wanted self managed (on-prem) solutions. We have helped many of these companies migrate to the Atlassian Cloud, and we have large enterprise customers who have been using the Atlassian Cloud products successfully for several years.

Until now, there were three choices:

• Server - a traditional, self managed product, sold with a perpetual license plus support and maintenance. This is designed to run on a single server.
• Data Center - again, self managed, but multi node, and designed for customers who required the highest availability and performance. This product is licensed using an annual subscription model.
• Atlassian Cloud - a SaaS offering, hosted by Atlassian.

Atlassian have now announced that the era of Server licenses is going to draw to a close. The future is very much Atlassian Cloud.

Customers who continue to require a self managed solution

Some customers will continue to require a self-managed solution for various reasons, such as data sovereignty, complete control or custom built integrations and Apps. This option will be available via the Data Center products. The minimum user tier is 500 users. As noted below, there will be price increases for Data Center licenses.

The transition

A key date is February 2, 2021. New Server licenses will not be sold from this date, and several changes will happen on the succeeding years. In general, support and maintenance will be pro-rata'd to fit these dates.

• 2 February, 2021
  • New Server licenses will no longer be sold
  • Support and maintenance pricing for existing Server licenses will increase
  • Data Center subscription prices will increase
• 2 February, 2022
  • User tier upgrades and downgrades for existing user tiers on Server will end. To do this will require a move to Data Center, or cloud.
• 2 February, 2023
  • New app sales for existing licenses will end.
• 2 February, 2024
  • Server support and bug fixes will no longer be available.

Why change to Atlassian Cloud?

Many of our customers who move to Atlassian Cloud cite very similar reasons. The main themes are around cost and support. Managing systems such as Jira to provide critical services to hundreds or thousands of users, along with the regular upgrades and maintenance that these systems require, is an expensive proposition. Now that companies such as Microsoft and Atlassian are providing reliable, enterprise grade Cloud solutions, many companies prefer to focus on consuming the services, and getting the best business value, whilst leaving the tasks such as upgrades and backups to the vendors who are experts, and who have the economies of scale that come with running thousands of similar systems.

Atlassian have taken the very bold step of focusing the majority of their resources on providing the best possible cloud services to customers, which entails an enormous investment. The new tiers of Premium and Enterprise, which have features such as IP whitelisting and data sovereignty, along with SSO features via Access, are now beginning to provide enterprise companies with the type of control and monitoring that previously only came with on-premise products.

Atlassian's strategy is to provide great Cloud products across all it's customer tiers - from Free to Enterprise, so there is something for everyone.

The latest announcements start to make the decision, "when", rather than "if". Eventually, the only self-managed option will be Data Center. Unless you require this, it would be advisable to start planning the transition to Atlassian Cloud.

This is something you can do yourself, but it is a lot of learning for a one off event. We have helped small companies migrate with a straightforward, fixed price approach, and we have helped enterprises migrate with a bespoke approach including the level of training, support and testing that is required for four-figure user bases.

Please get in touch if you are considering migrating to Atlassian Cloud, to see if we can help.

We recorded a webinar entitled "Migration from Server to Cloud"  on Wednesday, 2nd December. Click below if you would like to watch the recording.