Upon starting your journey with Atlassian, there are a lot of things to take into consideration ranging from the obvious to the more specific. As a start, check whether Atlassian products fit your needs, are they good value for money, and more.
But one of the most important decisions you need to carefully consider is choosing between Atlassian Cloud and Data Center.
Ever since Atlassians’ announcement to retire its server offerings, both Atlassian clients and partners began to focus more on cloud. On the one hand, marketplace partners have been enhancing their cloud offerings in an attempt to reach feature parity and guarantee a smooth migration. On the other hand, clients have been migrating to the cloud at an unprecedented rate.
As a result, customers have been posing a host of questions about the benefits of each hosting option, what sets them apart, and which option suits various types of businesses best.
In this blog post, we will compare Atlassian Cloud and Data Center, and help you decide which one is the right fit for your business.
1. Atlassian Cloud
Purchasing Atlassian cloud means that all of your instances are hosted within Atlassian servers. Cloud hosting has gained more popularity thanks to its convenience, scalability and reduced cost of ownership.
Atlassian Cloud has its fair share of skepticism. Concerns over compliance and security remain in highly regulated industries, which is not necessarily due to vulnerabilities but rather to the way things are for these industries.
An article published by Atlassian in 2021 details the reasons why many of its customers have opted to migrate from server and data center to the cloud.
The study found that 65% of the surveyed customers stated opertaional and maintenance costs as the main reason for their switch. A further 62% leaned towards cloud hosting as it eliminates manual upgrades and guarantees optimal performance. Last but not least, 31% of Atlassian customers obviously favors Atlassian Cloud as it helps them swiftly navigate between remote and office working.
2. Atlassian Data Center
Referred to as the “Self managed” option, hosting on Atlassian Data Center gives you the freedom to host Atlassian products either on your own infrastructure or third party cloud providers such as AWS or Azure.
Obviously, this can be perceieved as the old way of doing things. Having a bunch of servers that need constant maintenance and eventually high costs screams “BAD IDEA” for start-ups. However, for big companies or governmental agencies -with the necessary resources to deploy and maintain their infrastructure, Atlassian Data Center is likely the best solution, if not the only one.
A data center deployment means IT teams have greater control over their Atlassian products in terms of both security and data privacy. This is extremely crucial for customers who need to protect user data and comply with strcit regulations.
3. Which hosting option is right for your business?
Comparing Atlassian Cloud and Data Center and deciding on a hosting option depends on your business objectives, IT bduget, industry, among a host of other factors. Each hosting option be it Atlassian Cloud or Data Center comes with its fair share of pros and cons.
👉 Check out how Atlassian compares its Cloud and Data Center hosting options
For example, Atlassian Cloud is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t necessarily have neither the time or resources to sell-manage their Atlassian products. As we have mentioned earlier, the Atlassian cloud helps customers eliminate manual upgrades and costs associated with hardware and maintenance. Choosing Atlassian Cloud also means customers will have a team of experts at their disposal to help them keep their data secure through real-time updates. Additionally, cloud deployment guarantees faster deployment, more flexibility about remote working, and of course, scalability.
However, despite the clear benefits of cloud, some businesses and organizations tend to (or perhaps need to) consider other alternatives due to strict regulations and various data privacy laws. Think of government agencies, healthcare instituitions and the list goes on.
For these industries, Atlassian Data Center or server deployments are viable options to remain compliant and guarantee more security and control, although Atlassian Cloud is progressivly starting to gain ground in some countries recently.
