Migrating an International Healthcare Organisation Not-for-Profit to the Atlassian Cloud

Case study at a glance

The Challenge

Significant upcoming licensing costs.
Excessive use of third-party apps, with ~100 installed, which would impact licensing costs and was contributing notable admin overhead.
High volume of external users, which also played a role in anticipated cost increases.
Complex, legacy configuration which hindered performance and long-term system maintainability.
A short time-frame for Jira and Confluence Cloud migration.

The Solution

Reduce the number of external plugins and users, to significantly lessen the burden of licensing costs for our not-for-profit client.
Conduct a thorough review of all third-party apps to identify whether they were still necessary and fit for purpose.
Align with SNOMED’s new approach to user management, supporting them through the process of reducing external users, with proven best practice recommendations.
Embed new, optimised Jira configuration.
Migrate 166 Jira projects, and ~100 Confluence spaces, which totalled over 100,000 pages, to new Cloud sites.

The Benefit

Successful Cloud migration for Jira and Confluence, from Data Center to Cloud.
Annual savings of ~$500k, due in part to stronger app and user management.
85% reduction in unnecessary, costly apps, from ~100 to just 15 essential ones.
88% reduction in Confluence user base, going from ~2,000 to ~250 users.
65% reduction in Jira user base, going from ~1,000 to ~100 users.
75% reduction in Confluence spaces, streamlining them from ~400 to just 100 ahead of Cloud migration.
Migrated half a million items in Confluence in total, and 100,000s Jira work items.

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Background

Discover how we helped a global healthcare organisation avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars,and transform its legacy Jira configuration, with a complex but swift migration from Atlassian Data Centre to Cloud.

SNOMED International is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to enable consistent, precise, and interoperable health information worldwide by developing the world’s most comprehensive clinical terminology.

The Challenge

When we first met SNOMED International, the organisation had been using Jira and Confluence on Data Center for some time. There was a complex set-up, with thousands of users, around 100 third-party apps, and significant custom configuration.

On top of this, the not-for-profit had to adapt to a change in licensing model, which would result in an estimated $600k of additional costs per annum.

It was time for a change, both to improve usability and to significantly lower SNOMED’s expected spend. The answer? Migrating Jira and Confluence to the Atlassian Cloud.

The Solution

After an initial engagement with our team here at Automation Consultants, during which we investigated SNOMED’s Jira instance and delivered a comprehensive report, we were asked to proceed with the digital healthcare organisation’s Atlassian Cloud migration.

The Cloud migration itself was fairly smooth, and was completed within one month of AC work. The complexity lay in the vast range of Jira and Confluence external plugins and users.

We undertook a robust audit of all Jira and Confluence third-party applications, including Atlassian Marketplace apps. Reviewing every app in turn, we led careful stakeholder engagement to truly understand the value that each one brought to SNOMED’s teams. We also guided them through thorough testing and modification, demonstrating alternatives and finding pathways for migration to Cloud for core Marketplace apps.

Using our extensive expertise and user engagement, we were ultimately able to reduce the number of apps from ~100 to just 15 across Jira and Confluence.

We also guided the SNOMED team through their external user management. One complexity was that a large number of external users had been added to internal projects. With upwards of a thousand users, we equipped SNOMED with the knowledge and best practice to review their approach to users and to reduce their numbers.

Alongside valuable Jira reconfiguration to provide smoother user experience, we also reviewed, consolidated and optimised SNOMED’s Confluence spaces ahead of the migration. In total, we took the number of spaces migrated from Confluence DC to Cloud down from ~400 to just 100.

The Benefits

SNOMED International’s original aims were to avoid a huge increase in licensing costs, make use of the latest features available in the Cloud, and execute a successful Jira and Confluence Cloud migration, in a very quick time-frame.

With AC’s Atlassian expertise and Cloud Migration experience, we made this a reality for our client, a global digital healthcare not-for-profit.

In total, we were able to save SNOMED ~$500k per year. In part, this was achieved by significantly reducing the organisation’s reliance on third-party apps and high volume of external users, as these were due to dramatically drive up licensing costs.

With careful stakeholder engagement and guidance, we reduced the number of third party Marketplace apps in use on SNOMED’s Jira and Confluence sites from ~100 to just 15 essential plugins.

We also helped our client to take its user base from ~1,000 users to ~100 on Jira, and from ~2,000 to ~250 on Confluence. What’s more, our extensive Jira reconfiguration work ultimately now provides a better experience for this new, streamlined user base.

With significant annual cost-savings, more effective management of plugins and user management, and optimised configuration, SNOMED is now in a stronger position to benefit from future Atlassian Cloud innovations across Jira and Confluence.

Notably, SNOMED International now has the tooling, system performance and Cloud security it needs to continue delivering its significant, global work.

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