Atlassian Data Center is officially ending on March 28, 2029

And so it came, the official announcement that Atlassian is putting Jira Data Center, Confluence Data Center and Jira Service Management Data Center to rest permanently on March 28, 2029. It is not a surprise as we have suspected that this would happen for a few years now, but the announcement still hit like a virtual truck in the Atlassian community. This is especially true for Marketplace app companies that are now seeing their hard work turn to ash.

What do we know about Atlassian Data Center end of life?

The announcement was made on September 8th, 2025 on all channels. There was a blog post about this shift that claims that 99% of all Atlassian customers are in the cloud, which is probably technically true, but not really a fair comparison when you bring in all the free products people are using to test things. This blog post is pretty much a sales post with little to no explanation on why this shift is taking place other than "the cloud is awesome". It lists some resources and promises to support data center customers to move to cloud.

There was also a blog post in the developer blog, which was very brief with a short and vague motivation to why this is happening. This was accompanied by an announcement in the developer's forum, which is a little more informative, I think.

In short, the information provides the following:

• December 16, 2025 - new DC apps can no longer be submitted to the Marketplace.

• March 30, 2026 - DC license sales and app sales will end for new customers.

• March 30, 2028 - DC license expansions, sales, and app sales will end for existing customers.

• March 30, 2029 - DC subscriptions will expire, and the environment will reach end of life.

Bitbucket getting special treatment

For those of you that use Bitbucket Data Center, you will have a little bit of exceptions to make this shift less painful. While this is good news for Bitbucket customers, you should expect that Bitbucket Data Center will be removed shortly as well.

Atlassian services to help you transition

Atlassian are adding services for those that want to transition to the cloud. These range from self-help for small organizations and two Atlassian led programs to basically brute force your transition to the cloud.

• For customers with fewer than 1000 users, our dedicated self-service tools are designed to make upgrading as smooth as possible.
  

• For organizations with more than 1,000 users, our new complimentary Atlassian FastShift Program offers a strategic partnership, dramatically accelerating timelines (from 12–16 months to just 2–6 months).
  

• For customers with over 5,000 users, Atlassian’s Solution Design Acceleration program will support the most complex use cases with a dedicated partnership to plan and execute a transformation aligned to your company’s business objectives.

These programs are by no means bad and if you have a relatively clean Data Center installation, and you are dedicated to move to the cloud, then take advantage of them as soon as possible. If you have a data center solution that is messy, and you do not have your integrations in order, then I would carefully consider if a migration is the right call.

In many cases, it is a better option to not migrate, but to start fresh on Cloud and just migrate what you need for compliance reasons.

Regardless of what option you choose, you will need to dedicate a lot of time from your organization for change management. From a technical perspective, the best option is to start fresh and not migrate, but that put a lot of effort on the change management side as you need to do a lot of work to redefine ways of working. If you on the other hand just migrate the data, then you will have less effort on the organization, but you will probably suffer from an unstable platform that you will have to spend years cleaning up.

The best option is always to contact Atlassian and a partner to get a review of your platform so you can take proper decisions based on what is best for your organization, both short term and long term.

If you want my help, then you can reach out to me here:
https://jimiwikmanofficial.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/4/create/206

I can't move to cloud, what are my options?

This is a common concern and while there is light at the end of the tunnel with two new options for moving to cloud in the form of Atlassian Government Cloud and Atlassian Isolated Cloud, they are not yet very well advertised or presented. This means that you may have options that fit your organization in those two new options, but it can also be that you may have no options in those offers that fit the need of your organization.

Regardless of where you stand, you should have a conversation with Atlassian about your options. If moving to the new cloud options is not a valid path for you, then the next step would be to ask what the future holds for your Data Center platform. Can you keep the platform after march 28th, 2029, or will it become read only as is the case today? Atlassian has not, to my knowledge, addressed that topic yet, so you should ask them and see what the options are there.

If neither option is available, then your next option is to migrate to a new tool. This is no easy task and your best option here is a discuss options with a partner that both are experts in Atlassian tools, ways of working, integrations and of course multiple alternative tools that could be suitable as a replacement.

I am fortunate to work for an organization that has this exact expertise that also exist internationally, so feel free to reach out to me or Sii located in your country if you want our help with such a conversation.

3 years is not as long as you might think

March 28, 2029, might seem like a very distant date with more than 3 years to complete a migration to the cloud, or find new alternatives. In reality though, it is not that much time as a normal migration takes 6-12+ months and if you want to do a green field shift, then it can take even longer. The time required to technically move data and configurations however is the smallest change for most organizations.

What most companies do not realize is that migrating from data center to cloud is not just a massive shift in technology, but much more so in the ways of working. Change management is very important, and many organizations will have to change many internal processes as they transition from a fairly featureless data center setup with few and easily controlled changes to a frantic cloud setup that is completely different in functionality and UI.

The Atlassian Cloud platform also offers several defined processes like the Incident process and with the massive shift for Confluence in the last few years it now offers a ton of new ways of working. In short, it is very likely that whatever processes, or lack thereof, that you have today, will benefit greatly from a rework when you move to the cloud. This is a nontechnical shift that many organizations fail to recognize, and as a result their cloud usage is less effective than it can be.

Many organizations are also stuck with old onion setups with layers upon layers of old and forgotten configurations that have never been documented. Security is often poor, with no control over the APIs or scripts connecting to them. This means a lot of time will be spent trying to clean up and prepare a data center platform to even be able to migrate. Since the platform is in use, this can mean years of cleaning, or you just have to push everything and deal with the fallout after the migration. That tend to lead to performance issues and data issues and a lot of frustration trying to untangle decades of neglect and mismanagement due to lack of authority and strategies.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that is clearly visible in many old data center platforms.

So don't wait too long because the longer you wait, the harder it will be to find experienced partners that can guide you through your options and help to move to cloud, or to find new alternatives to replace your current Atlassian platform with.

The shortage of Partners

While there are many partners around the world, not many have the capacity required to handle this big shift as there will be many requests coming in, especially around 2027. While migrations are not technically very complicated, the state of many data center platforms add a lot of complexity to the process. This means that a lot of the partners will have many of their senior consultants locked up with migrations and cleaning activities, and this can cause a bit of a problem to find good partners to collaborate with.

It is also not just the migration itself that require good partners, but the planning also benefit greatly from having experienced partners, preferably close by so you can have workshops in person. While working on remote is great, sometimes you need to sit in the same room and use a physical whiteboard to be most efficient, and this is where your local partners really will make a difference. You can check what partners are available in your area through the Atlassian Partner Directory.

If you are located in Sweden and especially if you are located in Stockholm, then you can reach out to me for assistance with planning and executing your move to the cloud in the best way possible, both financially, technically and of course based on what your organization has the capacity for.

If you want my help, then you can reach out to me here:
https://jimiwikmanofficial.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/4/create/206

Don't just focus on the downside, consider the upside

When big shifts like this happens, especially when you get forced to make changes you had no planned for or hav budget for, then of course you will get annoyed and frustrated. It is a natural reaction to change and in our hectic times where finding funds and time make big changes like this is like climbing a mountain backwards with no qequipment, there are upsides to this.

Over time all systems become bogged down with technical debth and bad decisons leading to unnecessary complexity and often performance issues. Many organizations suffer from fragmentation of work where teams have built their own silos that are now harming the organization and costing a lot of money every day.

Making a massive change to a new platform can provide the opportunity many organizations need to get some of those things out of the way by establishing strategies and governance that are aimed towards a secure, legally compliant and useable solution for the whole organization, not just some of it.

This is by no means an easy task, but if you are struggling from bad practices and bad technical decisions costing your organization valuable time, or perhaps even causing micromanagment, lack of visibility or perhaps even making valuable deliveries difficult, then this can be a great opportunity for an organization reboot.

Many, many, many data center platforms are built like patchworks when it comes to integrations and reporting, looking like spiderwebs of connections to systems that are poorly documented, if at all. This makes this a great opportunity to restructure and build proper strategies so you take advantage of the new security features in Cloud and so you can define non functional requirement for data in all projects so you can get accurate, reliable and above all, valuable reporting.

I have seen several cases where organizations can reduce a lot of cost just because their old setups no longer have to rely on marketplace apps as the new functionality in Cloud match, or even surpase them. You can also consider the cost and effort of hosting, monitoring and of course upgrading both the Atlassian platform and all the surrounding systems.

There are many, many things that add value when moving from Data Center to Cloud and if you are interested in learning more then just reach out to Atlassian, a partner and if you want to book some time with me, then just contact me here:
https://jimiwikmanofficial.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/4/create/206

We are in for a big shift and I am ready, are you?