How to build a business case for migrating from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud

You’re using Atlassian tools. Jira, Confluence, maybe Jira Service Management too. And you’re still on Data Center.  

It works – sure. The tools might be stable. Familiar. Even “good enough.” But behind the scenes, you’re also on a platform that Atlassian is slowly phasing out.

Atlassian is putting all its weight behind Cloud. That’s where the new features go live first (or exclusively). But the truth is, you won’t move to Atlassian Cloud just because it’s newer. Or shinier. Or because Atlassian says it’s time. You’ll do it when it makes sense. 

And to make it make sense, we’ll walk you through preparing a business case for that.

Support for Atlassian Server ended in February 2024. That’s not news. However, what’s important is that the Data Center is not a long-term plan either.

Atlassian’s roadmap is clear:

Yes, Atlassian still “supports” Data Center. But at this point, it’s more support in the technical sense than in the strategic one. And who knows what its future will be.

So before you consider what’s next, it’s time to look at where you are now.

Moving to Atlassian Cloud affects your teams, your integrations, your infrastructure, and – let’s be honest – your budget. Before making this move, you need to convince others. You need to prove that it’s the right business decision.

But before you start building the case for Cloud, you need a solid understanding of what you’re working with today. Not what was true two years ago. But here and now.

Let’s start with the obvious – but often overlooked – areas.

Most organizations migrating to Cloud are running some combination of:

You might also have Bitbucket, Crowd, Bamboo, or other tools in the mix. List them too if they’re part of your operational ecosystem.

Break it down by product:

Get these numbers from your license report or audit logs. Cloud pricing is user-based, so accurate counts matter – especially if you’re trying to model savings.

It’s also worth checking how many of those users are actually active.

You might find accounts that haven’t logged in for months. Cleansing these users now can simplify your migration and reduce its cost.

Your Atlassian tools don’t live in a vacuum. Document what they’re connected to:

Note even simple things, like custom email notifications or webhook triggers. They can affect complexity, migration timelines, and licensing needs.

It is an important part because apps may account for 10-30% of the total cost and complexity in a migration project. 

What Marketplace apps are currently in use? Which ones are essential to your workflows?

You don’t need to turn this into a 40-page report. But you do need a baseline document that answers the above questions.

Let’s talk about the money. Because if you’re only looking at Atlassian license fees, you’re seeing the tip of the iceberg. The real cost of running Data Center goes much deeper – into infrastructure, maintenance, downtime, security, and labor.

This is where a solid business case starts to take shape. You need a clear look at what it really costs to stay where you are.

Start with the predictable part: your annual Atlassian subscriptions. Let’s take a realistic scenario – a company with:

Some licenses increase in big jumps based on user tiers. And in 2025, Atlassian increased DC prices by up to 30% in some tiers.

For cloud calculations, you may want to use Atlassian’s Cloud calculator. 

If you want to compare the price of the licensing itself, use Atlassian’s migration costs calculator. As a result, you will get a report based on the data you provided. Keep in mind that the price you see doesn’t take into account other values ​​such as recovered time or increased productivity, but we will discuss this later.

You already know what it takes to keep Data Center running. Servers, storage, load balancers, backups. Now you need to answer what it’s costing you to keep doing it.

Let’s say the typical infrastructure cost range like:

Your Atlassian environment doesn’t maintain itself. Ask yourself:

Estimate:

Let’s say:

Total admin effort: $350,000–$400,000/year

Most teams run 2-4 annual upgrades. You probably schedule them for evenings or weekends to avoid hitting users. And there is always real work behind the scenes.

Each upgrade still requires:

Let’s say a typical cycle takes 8–12 hours of hands-on time across your Atlassian admin team, including prep, execution, and post-checks.

Let’s average it out: 10 hours per upgrade × 3 upgrades/year × 3 team members = 90 hours/year

Assuming a blended DevOps/admin rate of $100/hour, that’s ~$9,000 per year. 

Not your biggest budget line, sure. But it’s time your team is spending just on maintenance. When adding more complex environments, it can easily double.

But there are also common additions:

Annual estimate: $50K–$150K, plus internal labor.

While TCO gives you the numbers, the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. 

Not everything that costs you shows up on an invoice. Sometimes the problem lies in factors that slow teams down, create risks, or undermine trust in the platform.

Stop for a moment and think about what your users and admins probably won’t say out loud, but absolutely can feel. In general, pain points don’t have to be always dramatic. They can be subtle. Creeping. Cumulative.

Here are the most common problems that accumulate in DC environments:

Some features on Data Center just aren’t available. Or they arrive much later. Or they require additional tools (and cost) to replicate.

Here are some examples of Cloud-exclusive features Data Center lacks:

So if you’ve ever “Why can’t we do that?” – this is probably why. 

Even well-optimized Data Center instances can reach performance limits.

What is the most common fix? More infrastructure, more configuration tuning. At the end, when something breaks – you own it.

Every audit or vulnerability disclosure adds another task to the admin queue.

In Data Center, all of this is your responsibility. If you’re in a regulated industry, the weight gets even heavier.

For most teams, the decision to migrate isn’t triggered by a single event. It’s the result of many small signals pointing in the same direction.

Here’s what those signals usually look like.

This one already happened. Atlassian Server officially reached end-of-life in February 2024. No updates, no patches, no support. If you were running Jira, Confluence, or JSM Server, you’ve already had to make a move – likely to Data Center.

But it was probably a temporary solution. A bridge, not a destination.

While Data Center remains supported (for now), it’s clear from Atlassian’s roadmap that Cloud is the future. Data Center is a maintenance contract.

Every year, DC licenses get more expensive, most often without adding more value.

And since DC pricing jumps at fixed user tiers, growth creates sudden budget pressure. And for the same license category, Cloud often includes more:

If you’ve glanced at Atlassian’s product announcements, one thing is obvious:

Cloud is the priority.

There are foundational features that are Cloud-only, and DC users can’t access them (and they likely won’t in the future).

You’re probably already:

Atlassian Cloud fits that path. It reduces your footprint, simplifies operations, and aligns with your IT evolution.

Distributed teams are the norm. And collaboration has to work across time zones and devices – without VPNs, latency, or service windows.

If you’ve heard:

“Jira is slow when I’m not on VPN…”
“Why do I need to log into the network just to open Confluence?”

Then you already know: on-prem is not built for hybrid work.

Cloud offers:

And when something breaks?  Your team isn’t responsible for restoring service at 2 am.

Don’t migrate what you don’t understand. Before setting a go-live date, define what needs to be available, stable, and compliant on Day 1.

Example checklist:

Use the Cloud App Assessment tool to audit what’s compatible, what behaves differently, and what requires redesign.

Migration should be a staged effort. And the most common phases include:

Many large organizations start with a pilot migration – e.g. one Confluence space or Jira project – before scaling.

What’s more, Dual licensing (Data Center + Cloud) is available during migration to help reduce risk.

So far, we’ve covered what you’re running, what it’s costing, what’s holding you back, and what a migration would actually involve.

Now comes the question that most business cases focus on:

Does it pay off?

This section walks through the cost comparison, ROI model, and how to present the value.

Let’s recall the example from the beginning of the article. 

If your annual license bill is $1.3M, your true TCO is likely closer to $2M+. This is what you’re actually spending. 

And this is your baseline. That’s what you should compare when Cloud seems “expensive.”

Cost tells you what you pay. ROI tells you what you get back. Let’s model just one area: productivity.

Say Cloud helps you reclaim 10 minutes per user per day by eliminating VPN lag, patch-related downtime, slow UI, or admin bottlenecks. 

But that’s not all. Now add to that the impact of tools like Atlassian Rovo ( a new AI-powered layer in Cloud). Thanks to that, users can query across multiple Confluence pages, get instant answers from distributed documentation, and avoid digging through old meeting notes or ticket comments manually. That’s the time you get back and potential decision cycles you shorten.

Adding it up quickly:

Even if you only capture 25% of that (due to process limits, adoption, etc), that’s still $4 584 250 /year in real business value.

For every $1 you spend on Cloud and migration, you’re getting over $2 back, even using conservative estimates. ($13.75M / $6.62M = 2.08)

Let’s break it into two views:

1. Full cost recovery (Cloud investment pays for itself)

So the full investment pays for itself in less than 1.5 years.

2. Just the difference between Cloud and DC)

That difference is recouped in less than a month – about 3 weeks.

You’ve assessed your environment, quantified your true costs, pressure-tested Cloud against your operational needs, and modeled both risk and return. While Cloud Premium may appear more expensive on paper, the real value comes from what you get back:

You’ve also seen that the top concerns – security, scale, app compatibility, disruption – are solvable. 

We’re not saying “migrate now.”  We’re saying: you now have the business case to make that decision, with facts and real numbers.