In light of Atlassian’s announcement about retiring Data Center products, your teams may be discussing a move to the Cloud.
Whilst, undoubtedly, some of you may be feeling the sting of a mandated Cloud migration, in this article we’re focusing on one of the more positive results of making a move.
Cloud infrastructure provides a powerful foundation from which to roll-out wider digital and AI transformation across your organisation.
Let’s explore how migrating to the Atlassian Cloud can support and strengthen:
If you’re on the cusp of a digital transformation initiative, making the move to Cloud could unlock the final tooling, speed of innovation and infrastructure you need.
ℹ️ Spotlight on the Atlassian Cloud Platform
The Atlassian Cloud Platform is primarily hosted on AWS’ high-performing, secure infrastructure. Fairly recently, Atlassian also announced its move to a multi-Cloud strategy, partnering with Google Cloud.
Historically, Atlassian Data Center (DC) apps have been valuable for those operating in regulated industries or those who need to manage their infrastructure more closely in-house. As such, the announcement of DC end of life (taking place 28th March 2029), may have been unwelcome – albeit perhaps not unexpected – news for some organisations.
Atlassian has addressed the issue with three additional Cloud offerings:
Atlassian Enterprise Cloud: An advanced version of Atlassian’s commercial Cloud platform, with enterprise-grade security features and support for EBA and BaFin compliance standards.
Atlassian Government Cloud: A separate Cloud environment US Government agencies or organisations, with enterprise-grade Cloud features, and FedRAMP Moderate controls.
Atlassian Isolated Cloud: Understood to be entering General Availability in 2026, the Isolated Cloud provides storage, compute, networking, applications, and databases in a virtual private cloud, alongside Enterprise Cloud security controls and Atlassian Guard features.
Atlassian commits to 99.9% uptime SLAs and 24/7 support for its Cloud Premium and Enterprise plans – although all tiers should generally experience high performance and uptime due to the robust nature of AWS/Google Cloud infrastructure.
Are you exploring your Atlassian Cloud hosting options? Turn to a trusted Atlassian Platinum Solution and Cloud Specialized Partner, with decades of Cloud Migration experience to guide you through.
Cloud infrastructure scalability
When you’re poised for digital transformation, it’s essential that your hosting infrastructure can adjust in line with your needs. Scalable Cloud hosting can dynamically increase and decrease in line with workload demands.
Atlassian Enterprise Cloud offers both vertical and horizontal scaling options. Both enterprise and evolving organisations can use a combination of the two scaling approaches, with vertical scaling (essentially consolidating data on a single product instance) ideal for supporting collaboration, centralised governance and standardisation.
Horizontal scaling, meanwhile, centres on increasing your multiple instances, which is valuable when handling separate lines of business, subsidiaries or acquisitions, or to meet tight security and compliance standards, such as data residency requirements.
Note! At the time of writing, Atlassian offers Data Residency for specific regions and countries: North America, EU, Australia, and Germany, with more regions to come.
ℹ️ Spotlight on scaling enterprise knowledge
When we talk about scaling, we don’t just mean computing resources. We’d also apply it to the demands that growing teams on the ground place on their toolsets.
Following a period of transformation, such as an acquisition or merger, secure and accurate knowledge will invariably become more valuable to teams – and potentially harder to find across various SaaS applications and sources.
Enter Rovo Search, an Atlassian Cloud-only innovation (which we’ll explore in more depth further down in this blog post). Using both custom out-of-the-box (of which there are 50+) connectors, Rovo Search pulls in data from all applications and third-party tools across an organisation.
This centralises knowledge which otherwise would be siloed, and potentially inaccessible to teams following an organisational change.
Transform scattered knowledge into an intuitive and dynamic knowledge management system, with our dedicated solution. Consolidate your information sources and build structured, searchable knowledge bases, all with our team’s expert guidance. Discover more!
Cloud security
Ahead of a digital transformation, confidence in your infrastructure security is paramount. Whilst self-hosted tech stacks may be reliant on your internal IT resources to maintain ongoing security controls and updates, moving to a Cloud-based platform will alleviate this burden.
Atlassian takes a layered approach to security for its networks, implementing controls at each layer of its Cloud environments, and dividing infrastructure by zones, environments, and services. The tech giant operates a Zero Trust model.
Amazon also, as you’d expect, bakes security into every layer of its AWS Cloud architecture (which is currently Atlassian’s primary hosting provider).
Note: As you prepare for a move to the Cloud, take the time to assess your security needs going forward – and your key stakeholders’ understanding of Atlassian Cloud architecture. For example, are all stakeholders aware of Atlassian’s shared responsibility model, and where accountability for the various elements of your Cloud infrastructure, data, processes, and more, lie?
Atlassian Enterprise Cloud includes powerful security and access management solutions through Atlassian Guard, which is included in the Enterprise plan. Guard enhances data protection and threat detection across your Atlassian Cloud Platform. Features include the ability for Admins to implement different authentication policies across multi-instances – which can prove highly valuable in the wake of complex organisational change or transformation.
The next few years will be vital in planning your move to Atlassian Cloud. Don’t waste this time – learn how to prepare for your migration with our expert-led webinar.
Integrations and Cloud migration transformation
Tightly integrated applications are essential ahead of, or during, a digital transformation initiative, to enable a seamless flow of information, event-driven automations, and a cohesive System of Work.
Generally speaking, the Atlassian Cloud infrastructure can better support integrations than its Data Center counterpart. With Cloud, integrations are handled by REST APIs, webhooks, and event-driven patterns, and designed for real-time integrations with SaaS platforms.
Compare this to a typical Data Center set-up: A potentially heavier reliance on in-product customisations, database access, or legacy APIs, alongside greater difficulty adopting event-driven or asynchronous patterns at scale.
The Atlassian Cloud Platform operates as a multi-connected, seamlessly integrated tech stack. The alternative is a disconnected collection of tools, with friction around data sharing, workflows and collaboration – all of which can hamper digital transformation programmes. (It’s important to note here that not all self-hosted instances will be in this category – but they may potentially be at risk of sliding into it!)
It’s also worth recognising that those on Data Center may start to feel left behind. In light of the sun-setting of Atlassian Data Center products, Marketplace apps will now almost exclusively be Cloud offerings going forward. Many third-party tools and innovations, meanwhile, are also Cloud-only, such as AI data Cloud platform, Snowflake, or the powerful low-code development solution, Databricks.
Cloud-only AI innovations
Now this is where it gets fun.
Atlassian has been focused on developing a raft of Cloud-only innovations, many of which are centred on AI experiences.
To support and enable digital transformation, AI-centric capabilities can maximise efficient processes, reduce manual tasks, and increase the flow of information across your organisation.
Let’s take a quick look at Atlassian’s flagship AI offering, Rovo.
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We’ve already mentioned Rovo Search, which connects enterprise knowledge across multiple tools and SaaS applications. Now let’s look at another core capability: Rovo AI Agents.
Designed to fulfil specific use cases, from summarising meeting minutes to creating work items in Jira, Atlassian’s range of out-of-the-box Rovo Agents can reduce manual, repetitive tasks. But in terms of supporting a digital transformation, you may want to look a bit outside the box, and explore custom Rovo Agents.
Using either Rovo Studio or Forge (Atlassian’s no-code Agent builder, and app development platform respectively), your teams can create custom Agents to automate and strengthen your business processes. We’ve built several for our clients, primarily around Service Management processes such as request triaging, but the scope is really endless.
Cloud creativity and adaptability
The dynamic and adaptable nature of Cloud infrastructure – its elasticity and scalability – lends itself well to evolving organisations. As does the Atlassian Cloud Platform’s scope for creativity and innovation.
Using Forge, in particular, you can develop custom Rovo Agents (as we’ve already explored), complex process automation and configuration, and your own Cloud apps. Atlassian Cloud enables you to respond quickly to changing business needs ahead of, or during, digital transformation initiatives – configuring, creating and collaborating on custom solutions.
Whilst Forge is an intuitive Cloud app development platform, to build truly powerful custom solutions, turn to dedicated Atlassian experts – like our team here at AC!
5 ways Cloud migration can enable digital transformation
Shall we sum up?
The Atlassian Cloud Platform can provide a powerful foundation for a digital transformation, over and above its Data Center counterpart. Here are five reasons why:
Cloud scalability: An organisation going through a period of change needs a scalable hosting solution. Atlassian’s Cloud infrastructure can dynamically scale resources up and down in line with your evolving business needs.
Cloud security: From the robust security credentials of both Atlassian and its Cloud hosting partners (namely AWS), to the additional measures that Atlassian Guard provides, your stakeholders will have the peace of mind that enterprise-grade Cloud security brings.
Integrations: Create a tightly-integrated, Cloud tech stack to facilitate collaboration, data sharing and cohesive processes both during and after a transformation or transition.
Cloud-only innovations: Don’t get left behind! Equip your teams for the future with powerful AI-experiences, agents and automations – only available on Atlassian Cloud plans.
Custom configuration: Evolve your Atlassian Cloud products in line with your changing business needs and processes, by using Forge, Atlassian’s Cloud development platform, to create custom config, workflows and agentic experiences.
Digital transformation can unlock great benefits…
…and, as we’ve demonstrated, the path to transformation may begin with a move to the Atlassian Cloud.
Let’s conclude with our Cloud credentials. As an Atlassian Platinum Solution partner, and with Atlassian Cloud Specialized status, here at AC we’re a trusted pair of hands to guide you through your Cloud migration and beyond.
We understand the impact a migration can have on your teams and work. So, we’ve spent years perfecting a holistic, flexible and proven approach to migrations, carefully designed to minimise disruption and deliver a successful move to Cloud as quickly as possible.
Whether you simply need some guidance around preparation and optimisation, or you’re looking for a dedicated team of experts to lead you through your Atlassian Cloud migration from start to finish, we’re here to help.
