Atlassian's Data Center to Cloud Transition: Everything You Need to Know

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Recently, Atlassian came out with a “bombshell”: There are real, set dates to sunsetting Data Center. But the writing has been on the wall: Cloud is the future, and Data Center is reaching its end of life. For some organizations, this is welcome news—a chance to modernize and offload infrastructure headaches. For others, it feels like a forced march toward change.

Atlassian is drawing a firm line in the sand, and now’s the time to plan your next steps. In this article, I’ll walk you through what’s happening, why Atlassian is doing this, and how Seibert can help through this transition.

What happened until now?

The transition hasn’t come out of nowhere. Atlassian has been gradually signaling its intention to sunset Data Center, and we’ve hit some major milestones:

February 2024: Atlassian stopped selling new Data Center licenses. Customers already on Data Center could still renew, but new customers were directed toward Cloud.
February 2025: Data Center prices jumped by 30%. Feature development slowed, with Atlassian prioritizing Cloud-first innovation.

If you’re on Data Center today, you’ve probably noticed the shift: fewer updates, slower feature rollouts, and more marketing focused on what Cloud can offer. There’s no denying that Cloud is where Atlassian is investing its resources.

Why has Atlassian taken this decision?

Atlassian’s decision isn’t a surprise. Supporting multiple hosting models splits resources, slows down development, and complicates the product roadmap.

By going all-in on Cloud, Atlassian can:

Innovate faster. Features can be shipped globally without waiting for customers to upgrade.
Offer scalability and resilience. Cloud infrastructure handles surges and global access better than on-prem deployments.
Standardize the experience. Instead of juggling Data Center, Server (already sunset), and Cloud, Atlassian can focus on one delivery model.

For customers in highly regulated industries, this shift might feel disruptive. But from Atlassian’s perspective, it’s a way to accelerate innovation and create a more consistent ecosystem.

All of this is not really “big news.” The sunsetting of Server in 2024 already told us where things were heading. What we’re seeing now is simply the hard stop.

What could this mean for your team?

How you approach the transition depends a lot on your industry, size, and regulatory environment. Let’s break it down.

Large Enterprises, Government Agencies, and Universities

If you’re in a highly regulated space, the move to Cloud isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Concerns about data residency, compliance, and integrations with legacy systems are real.

But here’s the good news: Atlassian has made big strides in addressing enterprise concerns. Data residency is expanding to more regions, compliance certifications are robust, and Atlassian partners (like us at Seibert) can help bridge gaps with custom development.

The question isn’t if you can move to Cloud. It’s how you make the journey safely and strategically.

Less-Regulated Environments in the Tech Industry

If you’re in a tech-forward industry without heavy compliance requirements, this transition is often easier. In fact, many organizations discover that moving to Cloud:

Simplifies admin overhead (no servers to maintain, fewer upgrade headaches).
Provides faster access to innovation (Cloud-first features often arrive well before Data Center).
Scales seamlessly as your teams grow.

For less-regulated industries, the main challenge isn’t compliance—it’s making the transition smooth while minimizing downtime.

The transition is happening, but you don’t have to do it alone.

Seibert offers Atlassian Cloud Migration Services.

What else is new? The new Cloud licensing model.

To add another wrinkle: Atlassian is also changing how Cloud licensing works. Instead of being billed for the number of users you have at the end of the month, you’ll be billed for your peak user count in a given month. This can impact IT budgets significantly, especially for organizations with seasonal fluctuations or temporary spikes in usage.

So now, the pressure is twofold:

Migrate to Cloud under a specific, tight timeline.
Adapt to a new billing model that might look very different from what you’re used to.

What’s going to happen to my favorite apps? Our solutions and alternatives

Runs on Data Center	Cloud-approved solutions
Comala Lists by Appfire	Didit Checklist for Confluence
Linchpin Essential \| Theme and Profiles	Navigation Menus for Confluence
Linchpin Intranet Suite	Mantra – Your Confluence Cloud Intranet
PlantUML for Confluence	draw.io
Project Documentation Macros by smartics	Aura Content Formatting Macros
Blueprint Creator	Properties can address the use case of collecting information in a form for Confluence pages. Reach out to the Blueprint Creator and Properties support team for help migrating
AutoPage	AutoPage Cloud is available, but not compatible with JCMA or CCMA. Reach out our support for help migrating..
Scriptrunner by Adaptavist	Many of the functionalities you may have added with Scriptrunner on premise simply aren’t possible with the Scriptrunner Cloud version. Seibert can help you reproduce those customizations with our Custom Development service.

How Seibert Products Can Help

Every organization’s journey looks a little different. Some need custom app development to replace critical Data Center functionality. Others need migration support and change management to ensure smooth adoption.At Seibert Products, we’ve helped organizations across industries make the leap to Cloud with confidence. We can:

Evaluate your current setup and design a migration roadmap.
Build custom solutions to replace or enhance apps not available in Cloud.
Support compliance and governance needs for regulated industries.
Guide your teams through training, adoption, and long-term optimization.

Still find that there’s no alternative to a Data Center app you’ve been using? Seibert can even build something unique to your needs.

Expert tip: A step-by-step approach to transitioning to Cloud

Assess your current setup by inventorying products, versions, user directories, apps, workflows, and data volumes.
Define requirements by clarifying security, compliance, data residency, and critical integrations.
Bring in a partner, like Seibert, right after requirements are sketched to reduce risk, compress timelines, and avoid costly rework. Assess Cloud readiness and apps, model costs and licensing, design the right migration strategy, map security and compliance, and enable change with comms, training, and success metrics.
Form a governance team with a cross-functional core, and define roles, decision rights, and risk management.
Close gaps by validating SSO/SCIM, encryption, audit logging, backups, and Marketplace app parity.
Pilot migration by running a trial on a low-risk project, testing automation, permissions, and app behavior.
Plan cutover by selecting tooling, sequencing workloads, defining freeze periods, rollback steps, and validation criteria.
Execute and validate by rehearsing with dry runs, cutting over, and confirming data integrity, security baselines, and monitoring.
Enable adoption by delivering targeted training, quick guides, office hours, and tracking user feedback.
Optimize post-migration by tuning permissions, automating governance, decommissioning DC infrastructure, and managing license costs.

Wrapping Up

Atlassian’s move away from Data Center isn’t just an end—it’s also a beginning. Yes, it means rethinking budgets, processes, and technical architectures. But it also means unlocking a faster and more innovative toolset for your teams.If you’re ready to explore your next steps—or just want to talk through what this means for your organization—Seibert is here to help. Together, we can turn this transition into an opportunity for growth.

Sweetlana Portnaya

At Seibert, Sweetlana researches and creates helpful content for regular people who want to level up their work processes, as well as better understand the complex and expansive world of Atlassian. She brings her experience from major tech companies and start-ups to the table to help regular teams get the answers they need.