On October 16, 2020, Atlassian has announced the end of sales and end of support of its server product editions. In a blog post Co-Founder and Co-CEO Scott Farquhar emphasizes that cloud products will be the company’s future focus. For customers who need or want high control over their installations, the Data Center editions will be continued and strengthened further.

This is an important turning point, because today’s market dominance of products like Jira Software has been built on the server editions as entry points into customer organizations. Also, much of the existing installed base of the products is still in this product segment.

Pointing out that “more than 90 percent of [customers] start with Atlassian cloud products”, Farquhar makes clear that the situation is different today. Cloud can be viewed the new server. “Today, the majority of [customers] are already benefitting from the advantages of cloud”.

What Will Change?

Affected are the server editions of the following products: Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Core, Jira Service Desk, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Crowd, and a few others.

End of new server license sales will be effective by February 2, 2021 Pacific Time (PT). At the same time, new prices for existing customers’ server renewals and upgrades will become valid.

Three years later, on February 2, 2024 PT, there will be end of support for all server products.

Detailed comprehensive information on the updates are described on Atlassian’s Upcoming Price Changes web page. Migration aspects explains the Journey to Cloud page.

Who Can (Widely) Ignore the Changes?

The changes will have little to no impact on you in the following situations:

If you are pure user and not concerned with setup, provisioning, or procurement of your Atlassian products, there will at least be no immediate changes, if any.

If you are concerned with product setup, provisioning, or procurement of Atlassian cloud or data center products, there will be little (i.e., new data center pricing) to no changes.

If you are concerned with product setup, provisioning, or procurement of Atlassian server products, and your intended product use will end prior to February 2, 2024 PT, then you can mostly continue as planned. This can apply, for instance, to time-limited subcontracted development projects. But be prepared that your prices might change.

However, in any case, you should be aware that the changes may impact some of your apps or plugin products, depending on how these products’ vendors react to Atlassian’s changes. So you might want to analyze this aspect of your current product installations and configurations.

Who Will Be Affected?

The changes will impact your use of Atlassian products in the following situations. In most cases you will still have more than three years  for your transition while staying in support and maintenance.

If you are considering a new purchase of Atlassian server products, then you need to get a quote before February 2, 2021 PT, in order to be entitled to purchase.

If you are concerned with product setup, provisioning, or procurement of Atlassian cloud products, and you have planned to use the products beyond January 2024, then you may receive price changes. And most important, you will need to move to an alternative setup in order to receive continued support and maintenance.

How Can You React?

It is always good to review and update one’s plans from time to time. This applies also to your development tool infrastructure.

If you are an existing Atlassian server customer and you can continue well on cloud or data center editions of your products, then this solution will definitely have advantages. However, there might be parts of your tool infrastructure that can benefit from additional changes. And every change is a new opportunity.

Quite some customers will not or not easily be able to make the transition from server to cloud or data center. Possible reasons are the higher pricing of data center (also depending on your number of users), technical characteristics or limitations of cloud or data center, and legal or regulatory constraints that prohibit you from using the cloud. In these cases, at least a partial move to other solutions might become necessary.

In future articles, we will take a closer look into these options and investigate possible tactics and strategies. Stay tuned.