Thad West’s Top 5 Atlassian Adoption Trends for 2023

Happy new year! 2022 was huge for Atlassian and for us here at Isos Technology – we joined the Acacia Group portfolio, became an Atlassian Specialized Partner in ITSM, and grew our team. But the coolest thing about 2022 was all the opportunities to implement, migrate, and streamline Atlassian tools in your companies. Looking ahead, Atlassian just keeps getting better, and we have a lot to be excited about in 2023. So to kick off the year, I’m making a few predictions about what trends I think Atlassian users can expect to see this year.

1. 2023 will be the Year of Atlassian Cloud

With the clock counting down on Server, more companies than ever are making the leap to Cloud, but that’s not the only reason I’m calling 2023 the Year of Atlassian Cloud. Atlassian has continued to invest in and develop the platform, the native functionality and app landscape have advanced considerably, and they’re making great headway in compliance. Now that Cloud can support tens of thousands of users – or an unlimited number with federated instances – it’s a great solution for even the largest enterprises. 

We’re already seeing more Data Center users migrate, and because of the incredible forward momentum of the product, I predict that trend is going to rapidly accelerate in 2023.

2. Automation and AI Will Be the Key to Doing More with Less

Atlassian has been investing heavily in automation – Halp, which lets users create tickets directly in Slack and Teams is just one example. With tech layoffs all over the news, more companies than ever will be leaning on automation and AI to help resolve their frontline IT issues, automate repetitive tasks, and generally do more with less. When companies double down on automation, they free up their knowledge workers to focus on high-value, strategic problems.

I predict that we’re going to see a big push to build out automation across the Atlassian tools. 2023 is definitely the Year of Atlassian Cloud, but it might just be the year of the robot, too!

3. Atlassian Will Be Everywhere - Not Just in IT

In 2022, we’ve done some really interesting, large-scale Jira Service Management and Jira Software implementations outside of IT – like this one for CBS Marketing. This year, I think we’re going to see Atlassian in general, and Jira Service Management in particular, move beyond IT into the enterprise at large. It just makes good business sense – companies have already invested in the platform, and it's flexible enough so that all types of business teams can use it to be more successful, more accountable, and reach more people.

So for 2023, I predict Atlassian will move beyond engineering and IT and into DevOps, accounting, finance, human resources, legal, marketing – any department you can think of that delivers services.

4. Jira Service Management Will Put the Squeeze on ServiceNow 

I said what I said, now hear me out. Atlassian has continued to invest in JSM, so its capabilities just keep advancing. The company’s strategy and the tool's capabilities have been externally validated, exemplified by the fact that Atlassian is a Leader in the Forrester Wave for ITSM and JSM is a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Platforms. At Isos, we’ve seen JSM completely transform service desk operations in some powerful and interesting ways, and we’re especially stoked by what Assets, its native asset and configuration management functionality, can do.

I predict 2023 will bring continued upmarket momentum for JSM, and this may just be the year we see larger enterprises doubling down on it by making it their sole ITSM platform.

5. Get Ready for Agile to Be Opinionated About Technology

Historically, agile is focused on people, practices, processes, and behaviors – definitely not technology! But for organizations to be successful and achieve agile outcomes, technology and tools are absolutely necessary. To be clear, technology should never dictate processes, but it can and should support and enhance them.

2023 may be the year agile and technology have a meeting of the minds, and Atlassian tools are the right tools for the job because they are incredibly configurable and don’t dictate how teams work.

Wishing you all a great 2023, and we're looking forward to putting Atlassian tools to work for your businesses!