UK data residency timeline for Atlassian Jira and Confluence Cloud

Atlassian’s Data Residency allows you to not only know where your data is hosted, but manage its location. Atlassian have several data storage location options around the world to choose from, however, at the time of posting this the UK isn’t one. So the question is when, if ever, will it become an option?

With all the benefits that moving your data to Atlassian’s Cloud, one thing that companies must be aware of is where your user-generated content will be stored. This is especially true if you are operating in certain industries such as defence, finance, government, or healthcare. Data Residency is currently available for Cloud instances of Jira Software, Confluence and Jira Service Management across the Standard, Premium and Enterprise plans.

So if you are based in the UK, your best option currently is either Dublin (EU) or Frankfurt (EU, Germany) but the good news is that Atlassian have plans to add the UK as an option AND that there isn’t that long to wait.

Location, location, location

The locations that you can host your data in currently include US, EU, Australia and Germany, but Atlassian have plans to open up the location choices to offer many more options in the future - including the UK, Canada and Japan among others. These locations have been delayed by almost a year from their original expected dates, which has allowed them to make some improvements:

“We’ve made the decision to focus on improving our data residency infrastructure, which will allow us to launch new locations much more quickly in the future and give us the ability to respond faster to new or changing regulations across various countries.”

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This means that not only will you soon be able to pin your product data, such as tickets and pages, in one of those locations, but you also know that when you do, you’ll be getting the most up-to-date infrastructure and protection possible.

The key information

So when can you expect to be able to store your in-scope product data at rest, within the UK? Well, the most recent update from Atlassian suggest that they aim to have data residency in the UK available between their Financial Year 2023 Q4 and 2024 Q1. Bearing in mind Atlassian’s Financial Year runs from July to June, this means that hopefully UK data residency for selected Atlassian Cloud products should be available between April and September 2023. The best thing about this date is that it still leaves you plenty of time to progress a migration from Atlassian Server to Cloud before Atlassian end all sales and support for Server, in February 2024.

The best place to check the timeline for cloud feature releases is Atlassian’s Cloud Roadmap. This area is updated quarterly by Atlassian to keep interested parties aware of the changes and release info that might directly impact them, such as custom hierarchies or automatic licensing provisioning. (Here is a direct link for information on UK data residency 😉) .

Summary

Barring any further release delays, companies using Atlassian Cloud Solutions like Jira Software Cloud, Jira Service Management Cloud and/or Confluence Cloud, that want to pin their resting product data and user generated content in the UK should have that option before the end of September this year.

If you wish to change data residency for your existing cloud products from among the currently available options, please get in contact with us.

And remember: if you have any Atlassian requirements, questions or comments that you feel BDQ can help with, please get in touch - let’s talk about what you need.