Introducing Atlassian Cloud Enterprise
Today, on the second day of Remote Summit, Atlassian officially introduced Cloud Enterprise for Jira Software, Jira Service Desk and Confluence. Well, announced it really; for now it is only available in an Early Access Program. Still, it’s a big announcement and packed with a lot of features that make Atlassian’s Cloud offering even more attractive for enterprise customers. Want to know what’s in the box? Read on!
Placement within the product lineup
Cloud Enterprise is by far the most feature-packed flavour of Atlassian Cloud. As I pointed out before, there is a free tier; there is standard as well as premium. And now, there is also Enterprise as the very top tier.
Unlimited Instances & Unified Billing
A typical complaint by the enterprise segment of our clients is that they dislike having multiple instances with their own billing cycles, potentially different account managers and even payment information. Having unified billing available will simplify a lot of corporate processes. And it’s looking nice, too!
And of course having unlimited instances available is pretty great, too! Never worry about a user maximum ever again and finally get the right instance names for your different subsidiaries.
Atlassian Access included
In my day-to-day consulting practice, the most common question with clients moving to Cloud is: “Do we need Atlassian Access?” And more often than not, the answer is: “You’ll want it, because it will make your life so much easier.” This is especially true for larger organizations, so Access being included in the Enterprise offer just makes sense. Enterprise Cloud hence comes with ‘batteries included’, bringing:
- SAML SSO and SCIM
- Two-factor authentication
- Audit logs
- CASB Integration (coming soon)
The last one deserves a closer look. In larger organizations it is quite common not only to have elaborate security policies in place, but also to have these policies monitored and enforced using software — typically a Cloud Access Security Broker or CASB (cas-bee) for short. Making CASB integrations available allows customers to extend their security policies to Atlassian’s Cloud products, which is great news for large organizations.
Data Residency
Where data is stored is not just a point of discussion within many organizations. In a lot of countries (and virtually in all of Europe) it is a matter of law and regulations. Needless to say, it is fantastic that Atlassian has heard the cries and in the last few years stepped up their data privacy game. And Cloud Enterprise brings it to another level by letting you choose where your data is going to reside. Yes, you can choose where your data is hosted, that includes issues, Confluence pages basically all the good stuff. And yes, you can migrate your data between geographies.
Enterprise Sandbox
This one is pretty much my personal favorite! On Server and Data Center, it was possible to set up sandbox environments using apps like Configuration Manager for Jira (which is super awesome by the way!). So far, on Cloud, no such app or feature existed. Not anymore!
The Enterprise Sandbox allows you to play around and try out configuration changes, apps and so on before actually unleashing them onto your users. And you can do so on a copy of your live data.
Release Tracks
Sure, we all love that Jira Cloud is always up-to-date and always gets the newest features. but every now and then you just wish that one new release could have been postponed a little. Maybe you have a big release coming up yourself and do not want to risk your users being surprised. Maybe you need some time to adapt your integrations.
Whatever the reason, Release Tracks give you more control over when exactly your Cloud Products are updated. What to stay on the cutting edge and always have the newest features? You can do that. Want to ensure the timing of an update works with your organization? No problem, you can postpone updates by up to two weeks!
Conclusion
Atlassian has been pushing Cloud for quite a while now, so it is not surprising that this year’s summit showed a lot of new features for Cloud. That being said, Cloud Enterprise is huge step forward and will definitely bring Atlassian Cloud to bigger and bigger organizations.
If you are interested in finding out how Cloud Enterprise can help your teams, do not hesitate to contact us at Jodocus.
