Migrating from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud? Three Big Differences You Should Know About.

The most apparent difference between Atlassian Data Center and Cloud is that Data Center is on-premise—you buy and manage the hardware, you’re responsible for security, and you have to handle the upgrades. In Cloud, Atlassian does that for you. Less obvious, but equally important, is that Data Center and Cloud are entirely different platforms. They aren’t architected similarly. The user interfaces may be very similar, but what’s powering them is quite different. That means you will have to change the way you think about your instance and, to a degree, the way you work in it.

If you’re considering migrating from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud, here are three other key differences to consider before making the move. 

Cloud Architecture Is More Prescriptive

One of the most important things to know when migrating from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud is that Cloud architecture is more prescriptive. Many Data Center users are large enterprises with heavily customized instances. In Cloud, you’ll have to work within tighter parameters, so even though you’ll likely be able to do everything you did in Data Center and much more, you might have to do it differently. If you’re using business intelligence tools, for example, you won’t be able to access the Cloud database as directly as possible with the Data Center. Instead, you’ll have to use the API.

These are all things that can be worked through, and we’ve done it plenty of times!

User Management Is Different 

Another thing to know when you’re migrating from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud is that they have different user management solutions. In Data Center, you use Crowd; in Cloud, you use Guard (formerly called Access). While both options offer enterprise-level user management, the main difference is that in Guard, you manage users across all your products from a single, centralized location instead of within each product. Atlassian Guard also offers some advanced security features and more granular permission schemes. Another cool thing about Guard is that external user security is on the development roadmap.

You can find a high-level feature comparison between Crowd and Guard on Atlassian’s site.

Marketplace Apps Are Different

You're probably wondering about apps if you’re migrating from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud. Many Marketplace apps are available for both solutions, but they don’t always have feature parity. App vendors have to build Cloud apps from scratch because the platform architecture is so different for the two solutions. The apps you currently use in Data Center might not work the same way in Cloud; however, they might not need to because Cloud’s native functionality differs from Data Center’s. Or you might be able to solve your problems with a different set of apps and maybe even reduce the number of them you’re using. Think of a migration from Data Center to Cloud as an excellent opportunity to reevaluate and right-size the apps you’re using. 

You can find a detailed comparison of Atlassian Data Center vs. Cloud on Atlassian’s site.

Take the Next Step in Your Atlassian Data Center to Cloud Migration

At Isos Technology, we’ve helped some of the largest, leading enterprises with the most complex instances migrate from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud. If you’re considering migrating, give us a shout.