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Get ready for cloud

Overview

Cloud is eating the world. No matter your industry, the trend toward cloud computing is an if, not a when. What that cloud looks like is up for debate, private or public cloud, or do you go full SaaS?
Whether you’re thinking about moving to Atlassian Cloud or not, there are some things that you should do now to prepare, such as claiming and protecting your brand.

Cloud strategy

Most organizations have a cloud strategy of some sort. However, these differ in their goal. For some, cloud means AWS or Azure; for others, it means SaaS. When working with Atlassian Advisory Services, please share as much as you can about your organization's cloud strategy.
Example: Our CTO has given us a direction to move everything into the cloud within the next two years, our platform of choice is Azure, but we’re trying to use as much SaaS as possible.
We have a “buy it, not build it” policy.

Site claim

One of the very first things to consider will be the name of your Atlassian Cloud site.
Currently, customer sites are limited to a subdomain of atlassian.net, and the subdomain prefix you will most likely want to choose will be one of strategic importance to your organization - yourOrg.atlassian.net.

Please note that Atlassian Cloud domains are provided to customers on a first-come, first-serve basis. To prevent any potential cybersquatting on your domain name, you are encouraged to claim your Atlassian site by signing up for a Free Cloud plan, before the domain is taken.

Your existing Atlassian cloud users

There may be teams and departments already within your organization using some of our cloud products. Speak to Atlassian Advisory Services, who will be able to generate a license report for your analysis.

Extended cloud trials

Atlassian offers free extended Cloud trials for our existing customers. The trials are associated with an existing Support Entitlement Number (SEN) and align with your existing maintenance period. This means they’ll finish when your maintenance runs out (at a maximum of 12 months).

Assess when your team (or a candidate team) has the time to focus on evaluating the features of our Cloud offerings by way of an extended Cloud trial, and ensure there is a sufficient maintenance period remaining to allow you enough time to conclude the activity.

Content and usage

Atlassian’s Cloud products provide the same benefits as our server products, but there are differences in features, functionality, and user experience (for both administrators and end-users).
  • Because Atlassian takes care of the hosting, there are some functional differences in administration that you should be aware of for Confluence and Jira.
  • Some Confluence macros are being removed because of low use, duplication of functionality, or to improve the security of the macros (or app).
  • An improved editor (consistent across cloud products) has allowed us to make some improvements to both the editing and the Jira issue view experience. For a full feature comparison of the old and new editors, or to learn what’s coming next, check out the roadmap.

Review whether your organization uses any of the macros (listed in the documentation above), which are planned to be depreciated. Consider if it makes sense to discourage use of any of these now in data center.

Want to know more? You can read a complete comparison at the platform level in Cloud versus Data Center.
Check out the Cloud Migration Hub if you’re interested in learning more about migrating, and check out the 10 biggest myths about moving to Atlassian Cloud.

SSO and user provisioning

With Atlassian Cloud you have a specific service, Atlassian Access, that takes care of both integrating with the most common SaaS-based SSO as well as User Provisioning Identity Providers. SSO integration is implemented using the SAML protocol, whereas User Provisioning is based upon SCIM.
Out-of-the-box support is provided for the main IdP vendors, such as AzureAD, Okta, and Google Cloud. Additionally, custom integrations can be added for other providers, as long as they support the SAML and SCIM protocols.
More details can be gathered at:

Please note that currently, there is no internal Atlassian User Directory, which would be the direct equivalent of Crowd.

Network architecture

While thinking about Atlassian Cloud, you need to consider, as with any SaaS-provided software, that it will involve some change in the way products and services are consumed by teams.
First, if user connections to the Internet are going through a proxy, you need to make sure that your IP ranges and domains are allowed.
Second, if your Atlassian products have integrations with on-premise apps, you will need to take into account modifying your network policies to allow the corresponding flows in and out.
This applies to both simple HTTP(S) links and API-based connections.

Please also note that with Atlassian Cloud only the REST API exists. So if you have Java API-based integrations you will need to port those to the REST API.

Tell us about your compliance needs

Classify the data (for example, personal, sensitive, strategic, etc.) and identify if they are subject to specific regulations that can prevent transferring them to the cloud.

Data classification is extremely important in any information security and compliance strategy, which becomes critical when considering any movement to the cloud. Maintaining proper control becomes a difficult task if you don’t know what information you have, how these assets are classified according to their level of sensitivity and value, their association with compliance policies, and the required access controls needed for security.
  • Data residency selection, that is, the capability to decide the location of your product's primary data, is an available feature in Cloud Enterprise.
  • Atlassian will help you meet your company's compliance needs. Check our compliance program.
  • For teams that need to comply with GDPR regulation, GDPR initiatives have been implemented for our cloud products. See Atlassian’s GDPR Commitment article for more information.
  • Atlassian Cloud security architecture provides features such as data encryption in transit, data encryption at rest, SAML-based SSO, and enforced two-factor authentication, which ensure control over how and who is accessing the data. See more in Security Practices.

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