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The End of an Era: Atlassian (Finally) Sunsets Jira Data Center

Sep 15, 2025

It finally happened. Last week Atlassian officially announced the end of life for Jira Data Center. We all knew this was coming, despite Atlassian repeatedly saying that it wouldn’t.

TL;DR Takeaways

Atlassian is ending support for Jira Data Center on March 28, 2029.
This is part of their push towards a “Cloud-first” strategy.
Customers have to migrate to the Cloud or find an alternative.
This is a controversial move, especially for large enterprises.

What’s Happening?

Atlassian is ending support for most Data Center products, not just Jira. The main exceptions are Bitbucket Data Center and Jira Align Data Center. Here are the key dates:

March 30, 2026: End of new Data Center license sales for new customers.
March 30, 2028: End of new Data Center license sales for existing customers.
March 28, 2029: End of support for all Data Center products.

This is a clear signal that Atlassian is all-in on their Cloud offerings.

Why Is This Happening?

Atlassian has been pushing for Cloud for a while. It’s clearly where the money is, where they make the most profit. This is all part of their “Cloud-first” strategy. And there are some technical reasons that it makes sense, theoretically it means they can:

Innovate Faster: A single platform allows for quicker development and deployment of new features (like Rovo and the other AI-powered tools).
Improve Security: Centralized control over the infrastructure means they can enforce security standards more effectively.
Simplify the User Experience: A consistent experience across all products and customers.

So from a business perspective, it makes sense, though I am not sure how much of a benefit that is in the real world, I don’t think supporting and porting features from Jira Cloud to Jira Data Center is a huge technical hurdle, but I am saying that from a place of very limited experience.

My Thoughts

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I get it. The future is in the Cloud, and Atlassian wants to focus its resources there. Their Cloud products have come a long way, and the new AI features are genuinely impressive.

On the other hand, this is a tough pill to swallow for a lot of large enterprises, especially those in highly regulated industries like finance and government. They have legitimate reasons for wanting to keep their data on-premise. The move to the Cloud is not always a simple lift-and-shift.

Plus I’m just generally not a fan of any move that takes choice away from the customer. Rather than just killing Data Center and forcing them, I think the strategy should have been to make Cloud such a compelling product that they wanted to move. Carrot, not stick.

I’ve worked with a lot of companies that have heavily customized their Jira Data Center instances. Migrating to the Cloud will be a massive undertaking for them, and some of their customizations might not even be possible in the Cloud environment.

I’ve also been in the game long enough to remember when Cloud did not scale at all. A big part of the business of the first company I worked for in the Atlassian space was migrating customers who had started on Cloud, outgrown it, and needed us to move them to On-Prem. While Atlassian’s Cloud performance has improved significantly since then, those memories die hard for a lot of old-timers in the ecosystem.

I am also kind of biased. I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if I wasn’t able to run my own little test instance of Jira Server to learn from. I think that’s how a lot of admins got their start.

I don’t want to sound like I am being too negative here though. Cloud has come a LONG way. And it really is the best option for like, 95% of their customers. Now what that means for that remaining 5%, we’ll see. There will certainly be a non-zero number of customers that use this as an excuse to migrate to something else (though the competitive options that allow you to self host are still pretty limited). But I am sure the Big Brain Business people at Atlassian did the math and decided that that small potential loss was worth the larger margins and potential gain of Cloud.

Industry Reactions

The announcement of the Data Center EOL has been met with a mix of resignation and frustration from the Atlassian community. While many saw this coming after the end of Server support, the official announcement has still been a tough pill to swallow for many.

Here’s a summary of the general sentiment:

Forced March to the Cloud: Many users, especially those in large, complex organizations, feel like they are being forced into the Cloud, whether they are ready or not. For companies with strict data residency requirements or deep integrations with on-premise systems, this is a major concern.
Loss of Control and Customization: A common theme is the fear of losing the deep customization and control that Data Center provides. Many of the powerful Marketplace apps that admins rely on have limited functionality in the Cloud, and the ability to directly access the database and file system is gone.
The Future of the Jira Admin: There’s also a discussion about the changing role of the Jira administrator. With Atlassian managing the infrastructure in the Cloud, the role will likely shift from a technical, hands-on admin to a more strategic, business-focused role.
Is it all about the money? Some in the community have expressed cynicism about the motives behind the move, seeing it as a way for Atlassian to increase revenue through Cloud subscriptions, which can be more expensive for large organizations.