How Jira Cloud Migration Assistant Helps In-House Migration

In October, Atlassian announced the plan to phase out sales and support for their Server licensed products.

While customers with Server licenses are able to continue using their Server licensed products indefinitely, Atlassian’s announcement causes many Jira users to start exploring other options.

If your business has the server space, the resources, and the knowledge to maintain Atlassian Server-licensed products, you could support the license on your own.

However, as of February 2021, Atlassian announced they would no longer sell Server licenses and price changes will go into effect for Cloud and Data Center licensed products. As of February 2024, Atlassian will no longer support Server-licensed products, meaning they would no longer fix any bugs or push any updates.

Atlassian ending support of their Server-licenses has security- and compliance-related implications. Without security patches and bug fixes, the Server licenses could be exposed to looming cybersecurity threats.

Users in this predicament should start a plan now to ensure they’ve created a clear roadmap for safely and securely migrating. Atlassian knows this announcement caught some of their users by surprise, and they are providing partners like Oxalis with all the tools needed for a safe and secure migration to Data Center license or Cloud license. Learn more.

Atlassian is also helping those who would like to migrate to the Cloud in-house with several resources and tools, the best of which is their Jira Cloud Migration Assistant.

What is Jira Cloud Migration Assistant?

Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is a do-it-yourself app in the Atlassian Marketplace that helps Server-licensed users to migrate from Jira Server to Jira Cloud. It offers broadstroke views, actions, and guidelines to migrate projects, users, and groups.

Jira Cloud Migration also covers an important part of any migration: deciding what to migration over and what to leave behind. Cleaning house during a migration speeds up the migration, but also removes unused projects and clutter. After a migration, you should only see the projects, users, and groups that you use and need. Otherwise, you’re potentially wasting time, money, and effort. Talk to an expert.

In order to use Jira Cloud Migration Assistant, you will need to do the following:

You’ll need a Jira Cloud site set up before migrating.
- If you haven’t already, start a free cloud migration trial to get started.
- For teams ready to license, contact Oxalis for the best deal.
This app requires that your Jira Server or Data Center instance runs on version 7.6 or above (Jira Service Management support coming soon).
Read the documentation or visit the server to cloud migration guide for a step-by-step overview of the migration process.

Can You Migrate Any and All Atlassian/Jira Products?

The short answer to this question is no.

Currently, the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is only for the following users:

Users migrating Jira Software or Jira Core Server sites to new Jira Software or Jira Core Cloud sites.
Users migrating Jira Server or Data Center projects or users and groups to a Jira Cloud site.

Do you need to migrate your Jira Service Management or other Atlassian products that don’t fall into this perview? Oxalis’s award-winning team of Jira high-compliance experts is ready to help you migrate quickly and efficiently, while organizing and optimizing each step of the way.

How Much Does it Cost?

Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is free for any Jira Server instance or Jira Data Center instance.

Is Jira Cloud Migration Assistant Right for Me?

If you’re feeling like this is the greatest thing Atlassian could offer its Jira Server instance customers, you’re not wrong. They have provided an amazing tool that helps users start their journey to the cloud.

However, Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is not flawless in its execution, but rather an overall view for how simple cloud migrations are executed. Get help.

Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is best used on smaller instances. Larger instances or enterprises will see more complications and slower performance. For those sized businesses there will be other, authentication/authorization design, technical debt, process consolidation, and user change management challenges. Also, Jira Cloud Migration Assistant does not have Jira Service Management support.

Most importantly, Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is a wonderful tool to help scrape the surface of Cloud migration and is best used if your system is smaller and uncomplicated.

But, as most Jira software is used within companies and teams, more complication comes out of necessity to work around teams’ needs. While the app is working on the surface to move things over, more nuanced parts of Cloud migration are left untouched by the app, tossing the burden to your IT department. For example:

There are no integrity checkers to ensure broken features like missing priorities or dangling resolutions don’t exist.
Jira Cloud Migration Assistant also does not clean up or remove superfluous metadata before migration.
Users reported other smaller issues when using Jira Cloud Migraiton Assistant, such as duplicate user roles

Through and through, Jira Cloud Migration Assistant can help significantly when migrating from Server instance or Data Center instance to Atlassian Cloud. However, as a standalone app, it does not get into the intricacies that many companies and teams require after building and customizing their Atlassian software.

Oxalis’ Proven Methodology: Your Atlassian Cloud Migration, Simplified

As your trusted Atlassian Cloud Migration advisors, we’ve distilled our extensive experience into a step-by-step eBook. Whether you’re transitioning from Server or Data Center, this guide covers every aspect of your journey.

This is Where Oxalis Comes In

Oxalis has not only executed Cloud migrations in extremely difficult environments (high compliance, large scale enterprise), but we’ve also customized and cleaned them along the way. Teams investing in a cloud migration will want to take advantage of the opportunity to transition their users to the new Cloud capability and collaboration paradigm. The shift from server to cloud is not one for one, or like for like. New capability will be unlocked. Our focus is not just to move your systems, but to improve them. This takes each step into account and ensures that every step we take is deliberate to help your systems perform considerably better than when it was brought to us.

The shortcomings mentioned above are exponentially more time and labor intensive with the scale of use and business. Therefore, if you have a larger presence and more use on Jira Software or Jira Core, you will likely need more customization and optimization. Get support.

Rather than stumble through and learn about migrating to the Cloud as you go, pushing your timeline farther out than intended, hire a dedicated team that will complete the job in less time with pure efficiency and dedication to creating the smoothest process possible.

We’re prepared to simplify your migration and optimze your systems along the way.

Jira Service Desk is now Jira Service Management

On November 9th, Atlassian announced Jira Service Desk (JSD) is changing to Jira Service Management (JSM) while adding functionality. As of that date, Jira Service Desk no longer exists.

The change, announced on the heels of Atlassian earlier announcement about phasing out Server Edition products, adds to the existing powerful functionality and user value of the Jira Service Management as a powerful ITSM ticketing software.

This name change is not simply a rebranding of the existing software.

JSM represents the full force of Atlassian pushing into the ITSM market. JSM is a fully-featured service management product that out-competes the capabilities of Service Now, Microsoft SCCM, and other similar products. Look for this product to become even more capable and with the following acquisitions:

Mindville—Asset Management for enterprise organizations. Now your Jira Service Management instance will connect with robust Asset Management capabilities.
Halp—Halp is a robust conversational ticketing software that allows for seamless integration between tools like Slack and Teams to Jira Service Management, making your agents and tools even more powerful and capable to serve your organization.
Opsgenie—Opsgenie was acquired some time ago and integrated into the Atlassian ecosystem. With JSM, rebranding and focusing on comprehensive ITSM, look for stronger DevOps integration and capabilities to come online with meaningful insights into your organizational performance. Do you have some doubts about Jira Service Desk Opsgenie, feel free to send us a message.

Couple this change with the already beloved Jira Software Cloud, and your organization is on a path to strong data visibility, work productivity, efficiency services, and comprehensive organizational insights. Organizations adopting Agile service management principles and tools such as these are positioned to win and keep pace with evolving business needs. Contact our experts.

What is Atlassian adding to Jira Service Management?

Incident Management with Opsgenie: Previously a stand alone product, Atlassian is including the on-call scheduling, alerting, and incident swarming software in all Cloud Editions of JSM.

Note: Jira Service Management for Server/Data Center Edition will be released by the end of 2020 and will not include Opsgenie. However, Opsgenie will still be available as an add on. Cloud customers currently using Opsgenie are able to migrate to Jira Service Management. All Opsgenie billing will fold into Jira Service Management cost.

They’ve also added deeper integrations with Jira Software, Bitbucket, and Confluence to ensure seamless integration across the popular Atlassian suite. Get help.

Change Management: Atlassian added functionality to support changes to services for software development and infrastructure. This functionality includes tools for change risk assessments, advanced approval workflows, and deeper integrations with tools like Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins, and CircleCI.

Overall Agent UX Improvements: Atlassian also announced updates to their agent experience, making it easier to categorize service requests, incidents, problems, and changes. Other features support this, with easy, fast, and intelligent categorization of similar tickets and action responses.

While all of these updates are included, they are packaged as one product—not as a bundle. Get started.

What is the price difference between Jira Service Management and Jira Service Desk?

[table id=9 /]

Later this year, Atlassian will release Data Center pricing.

I’m currently a Jira Service Desk Member, what happens now?

For Cloud

If you currently have Jira Service Desk on Cloud, you will automatically receive access to Opsgenie within a few weeks of the announcement on November 9, 2020. It will access your current user tier at time of update.

For Server/Data Center

If you currently have Jira Service Desk on Server or Data Center edition, Jira Service Management will be available by the end of 2020 in the 4.14 release.
The new release includes new JSM features and available integration with Opsgenie (separate purchase required).

Reminder: Atlassian is ending Server edition sales by February 2021, and support by February 2024. We recommend migrating to Cloud if possible.