Will Jira Data Center end up like Jira Server? Perhaps this question would not have appear in the user`s minds if it wasn`t for the Atlassian Community. After the last two-day conference Team’22, where there was no mention of Data Center further development, Rodney Nissen (aka The Jira Guy) wrote a great critique, with even better title: “Atlassian, we need to talk about Data Center”. See what happened next.

Atlassian Community shows once again that it`s an essential part of the ecosystem. With all the understanding of the cloud-first philosophy, the silence about the future of Data Center triggered a heated discussion. It started with The Jira Guy who, as it turned out, verbalized the concerns of many users from around the world. In short: Atlassian’s policy does not ensure that the product will be developed. And it’s not even about keeping up with the pace of the Cloud version. No, it’s about development in general.

Next Biro Florin of Jexo.io posted a survey on LinkedIN asking users if Atlassian would end support for DC. Results? 2/3 of people believe that there are clear reasons for this.

Finally, Gosia Kowalska, Data Center product director, wrote an answer, trying to dispel community doubts. She convinces that Atlassian does not intend to end support for the product, and what more, they will try to address the most critical areas for users: “Performance and scale”, “Security and compliance” and “Infrastructure and operation”. What is worrying, however, is the sentence “Every feature or extension that is on our public roadmap will be delivered and supported, even if goes beyond our strategy.” What do you think about it? Doesn’t that sound like “We will finish this roadmap even, if it costs more than we assume, but expect nothing more than that”.

Jira Guy expressed this exact doubt in another article. I encourage you to read both, the text and the discussion on the community forum.

What’s next?

In my opinion, it`s a good idea to organize a Q&A session, as I suggested in one of the comments. What`s promising, Gosia from Data Center ensured that Atlassian will invite all interested users to the AMA (Ask Me Anything) meeting in the near future.

Thanks for taking the time to read the article. Feel free to express your opinion.
photo by Javier Allegue Barros