Overview of Atlassian tools operating options

linkyard supports several operational options for the Atlassian tools. In this article we introduce the different options.

Atlassian basically distinguishes between the following deployment variants:

• Server
• data centre
• Cloud

The Server variant is intended for on-premise operation or at an IT service provider, whereby the system can only be operated on a single server at the same time. In the event of a system failure, an interruption is mandatory until a failover can take place. From a performance point of view, the system cannot be scaled arbitrarily to more users and slows down with increasing system load.

The Data Center variant is also intended for on-premise operation or at an IT service provider, whereby the system can be operated on a cluster with several nodes. The system can thus be operated with high availability and high scalability.

The Cloud version is reserved for operation by Atlassian.

Not all products are available in every variant. The following graphic shows the availability of the products per deployment variant.

app marketplace

An important concept is that most of Atlassian's applications can be extended by so-called apps. This gives other software vendors the opportunity to extend Atlassian's products. Atlassian operates the Atlassian Marketplace for this purpose. Also the plugins are provided depending on the deployment variant (server, data center, cloud), although not all variants are always supported. In addition, apps for the Atlassian Cloud often differ significantly from apps for servers and data centers, as they are technically implemented differently. We explain more about this in the article "Privacy in the Atlassian Cloud".

From our experience it is rather rare that a customer uses Jira or Confluence without any additional apps. Most customers have certain additional third party apps in use, depending on their specific use case.

Licenses and subscriptions

In terms of licensing, the Server variant is a licensing model. When a license is purchased, one-time licensing costs are incurred. From the second year, maintenance fees of more than 50% of the license price are charged. If the maintenance is not extended, you will not get access to new software versions or security patches released after the end of the maintenance period. However, the system usually continues to run after the maintenance period has expired. However, this does not always apply to third-party apps. Depending on the manufacturer's policy, these apps sometimes stop working.

For data center and cloud, subscriptions are purchased by the customer. Once the subscription expires, the software will no longer work and the subscription must be renewed in good time. In contrast to the server variant, subscriptions only have constant recurring costs. There are therefore no one-time additional costs for the initial license.

linkyard supports all operating models

We support our customers regardless of the chosen operating model and provide full service around the products, starting with consulting and customizing, training, software development and support. In the case of servers and data centers, we also offer operation as a managed service. A special feature of our Managed Service is that the customer can decide whether the operation of the service is based on linkyard infrastructure, on public cloud infrastructure or on specific private cloud infrastructure at the customer's premises or at one of the customer's data center providers.

Which variant is the right one?

Various aspects must be taken into account when choosing the operating model. These include considerations regarding interfaces to be implemented, security & compliance considerations, as well as the exact purpose and number of users. On the occasion of the abrupt end of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shields, we have separately highlighted the aspect of data protection in the Atlassian Cloud and in the linkyard operating models.

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linkyard is a Gold Atlassian Solution Partner based in Switzerland and offers a full service around the products. In addition to product knowledge, linkyard offers proven expertise in the areas of management, project management (lean/agile and classic), security, compliance, risk management, requirements engineering or software architecture. linkyard is specialized in technically demanding integrations and customers with particularly high demands on information security and data protection. The information security management system of linkyard is certified according to ISO/IEC 27001:2013.