Cloud migration guide

Introduction

Planning your upgrade from Data Center to Cloud? This guide gives you a clear path from first assessment to full adoption with the tools, timelines, and support options to upgrade with confidence. This guide will help you:

• Assess your environment. Learn more about Portfolio Insights and see what's ready to migrate.

• Explore migration programs and tools. Accelerate migrations with the FastShift program or take advantage of our Cloud Migration Assistants.

• Walk through the phases. Dive into the six migration phases, including the MAGIC5 assessment.

• Start a free trial. Spin up a cloud migration trial to test your migration at no cost for up to 12 months.

Where do I begin my journey?

As Data Center approaches end of life, we know there’s a lot to consider: where to begin your cloud journey, the process needed to get there, and who needs to be involved throughout each stage. We’ve built out the tools, resources, and support to make every step clear and manageable, no matter your organization’s size. If you're not sure where to begin, start with these three steps:

1. Review the Data Center end of life milestones. See what's coming and how each milestone affects your migration planning and timeline.

2. Confirm your user count. As outlined below, this determines support levels and who handles specific tasks.

3. Review the six migration phases. Think of this as the blueprint for your migration experience, with phases that map out the journey from start to finish

Migration support

Moving to cloud is a team effort, and you don't have to navigate the journey alone. Atlassian, Solution Partners, and Advisory Services are here for you every step of the way. These options aren’t mutually exclusive, and Solution Partners can be especially helpful if you’re following a self-serve path.

Self-serve migration options

The self-serve migration path is designed for teams that want to lead their own move to cloud with Atlassian tools, documentation, and support available along the way. It’s typically the best fit if you have:

• Fewer than 1,000 users to migrate or fewer than 1,000 seats per product across Jira, Jira Service Management, or Confluence.

• Experienced internal admins and project managers who can lead the cloud transformation project.

• A preference to own the timeline and execution directly, using Atlassian’s tools and documentation as your guide.

Explore the full set of available tools and documentation in the Resource library below. If you run into an issue with Atlassian migration tooling, contact Atlassian support* to get connected with a Migration Support Engineer.

*Keep in mind, Atlassian support covers technical assistance, not migration strategy, decision-making, or planning. Review our Support Offering SLAs to understand response times and coverage. For deeper strategic or hands-on help, consider working with a Solution Partner or Advisory Services.

Supported migration options

Supported migration options are ideal if you're migrating a large volume of users, your migration is complex or timeline-sensitive, or you want hands-on guidance. From Atlassian's FastShift and Advisory Services to our ecosystem of Cloud Specialized Solution Partners, these support options can be used separately or together depending on your needs.

Join the FastShift program

FastShift is a complimentary migration acceleration program designed to help you move to Atlassian cloud faster. By pairing you with a dedicated team that works alongside yours, FastShift helps accelerate your migration 2-3x faster and set your teams up for success on day one, while reducing cost and effort.

FastShift is available to you if you:

• Have (or will purchase) a commercial cloud license for 1,000+ users for at least one of the following apps: Jira, Jira Service Management, or Confluence.

• Commit to an accelerated migration timeline of 3-6 months.

• Have internal executive sponsorship to support the project and dedicated resources to meet your program responsibilities.

Additional details about who FastShift is for and how it works can be found in the FAQs. Reach out to your Account Executive if you’re ready to get started with FastShift. If you're unsure who your Account Executive is or if you don't meet the criteria, please contact Atlassian Support for assistance.

Work with a Solution Partner and/or Atlassian Advisory Services

Not every migration fits neatly into a self-serve or FastShift-only model. If your environment is complex, your timelines are aggressive, or your team simply needs more hands on deck, Atlassian's ecosystem of Cloud Specialized Solution Partners and Advisory Services can provide additional assistance, whether you're migrating independently or already enrolled in FastShift.

Here’s how they can plug into your cloud transformation journey:

• Solution Partners include many who are Cloud Specialized and have guided hundreds of migrations across industries and deployment sizes. They bring battle-tested playbooks for complex environments, including heavily customized workflows, app rationalization, and change management.

• Advisory Services offers Cloud Transformation Services backed by deep Atlassian cloud expertise and proven experience across hundreds of enterprise transformations. Our experts help you make the right cloud decisions, reduce risk, realize more value, and build a foundation for AI-powered ways of working.

Both can operate as an extension of your internal team and can be engaged at any stage of your migration journey, though they do require an additional cost.

Consider working with if any of the following apply:

• Your Data Center environment is large, complex, or heavily customized, including many third-party applications

• Your organization has strict regulatory, security, or compliance requirements

• You have tight migration timelines

• Your organization could benefit from additional technical administration support to plan and execute the migration

Resource library

Regardless of your support path, here are some of the resources we've built to help you understand costs, explore cloud, assess your environment, and execute your migration.

Understanding cloud costs

Ask your Account Executive about step-up credits, dual licensing, and other available incentives.

Will add later - Cost Savings Calculator

Cloud migration trial

A free cloud migration trial lets you explore and test drive cloud in a sandbox environment. To check if your license is eligible:

1. Log in to my.atlassian.com

2. Click on the license you wish you migrate

3. If your license is eligible, you will see a ‘Start my Trial’ link

4. Go through the sign up flow to “request a ticket”. If you need help, please get in touch.

With the trial, you can:

• Explore Standard and Premium Cloud features and functionality and evaluate what’s different.

• Build a proof of concept to demo with stakeholders.

• Run test migrations and user acceptance testing before go-live.

The trial lasts the duration of your Data Center subscription (up to 12 months), matches your current tier, and supports up to 20,000 users per app.

Portfolio Insights

Portfolio Insights is a free data assessment tool in Atlassian Administration. It gives you a centralized view across your Cloud and Data Center environment to understand the health of your instance and build a clear, actionable migration plan. Use it to:

• Visualize your Atlassian footprint. Get a unified view of your Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence environments, to take stock of your Atlassian footprint and plan migrations with clarity.

• Plan smarter migrations. Identify which Data Center instances are ready for migration and get targeted recommendations to close gaps, including a Marketplace apps review.

• Optimize before you migration. View recommendations on how to keep your Data Center instances healthy, secure, and high-performing until you’re ready to migrate.

Visit the Portfolio Insights support documentation to get started.

Cloud migration assistants

The Cloud Migration Assistants (CMAs) are free Atlassian apps, available in the Atlassian Marketplace, created to migrate your data from Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Bitbucket Data Center to Cloud. Although they primarily focus on data migration, these assistants provide a number of checks to support a smooth migration. Learn more about the available CMAs:

• Jira Cloud Migration Assistant: Explore the JCMA marketplace app and see what data gets migrated for Jira and Jira Service Management.

• Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant: Explore the CCMA marketplace app and see what data gets migrated for Confluence.

• Bitbucket Cloud Migration Assistant: Explore the BCMA marketplace app

• and see what data gets migrated for Bitbucket.

Technical documentation

We’ve put together a detailed migration support documentation hub to help you navigate every technical step. On this page you can find documents to help you prepare to migrate, information on user management, resources for app assessment, pre-migration checklists, and more. Bookmark it to find the right docs at every stage of your journey.

Getting started with your cloud transformation

This section walks you through migrating from Data Center to Cloud: from initial assessment through post-migration adoption. Each phase builds on the last, so start by confirming your requirements before moving through each stage.

Before you begin: Identify migration requirements

Before you sign your cloud contract, make sure you can answer these questions:

• Goals – What are your goals for the move? What do you want to enable long term?

• Scope – Which products are you migrating? How many seats must migrate? Which Marketplace apps must stay in place versus which ones might we reconsider?

• People – Who needs to be involved in the migration process: as decision makers and executioners? How much time can our stakeholders dedicate?

• Timeline – What's your timeline? What data might be ready to move before others?

• Constraints – What are your security, compliance, and privacy requirements? Are there technical constraints?

Assess phase

Before you can build a migration plan, you need a clear view of your starting point and target state. In the Assess phase, you'll get a picture of your Atlassian landscape, confirm which cloud deployment is right for you, and cover your bases with MAGIC 5. Getting the Assess phase right sets the foundation for a smoother migration and a better experience in cloud.

Evaluate deployment options

Choosing the right cloud deployment shapes your security posture, compliance requirements, data residency, and post-migration administrative controls. Our primary offering meets most customers' needs:

• Atlassian commercial cloud offers a secure and compliant pathway to cloud with global data residency regions, industry leading compliance certifications and add-ons available for extra protection.

If your organization has specific regulatory requirements, we also offer alternate cloud deployment options:

• Atlassian Government Cloud, a FedRAMP Moderate platform built for US government agencies and their partners

• Atlassian Isolated Cloud, a fully dedicated cloud environment for organizations requiring data isolation for maximum security and control.

Explore the differences across all three deployment options to choose the cloud pathway that best suits your security and compliance needs.

Cover your assessment bases with MAGIC 5

After assisting countless teams with their cloud migrations, we noticed a few key areas that deserve a closer look to ensure you’re set up for a smooth migration. To help remember these topics, we use an acronym: MAGIC. MAGIC outlines the steps for assessing your Data Center instances to identify and mitigate potential friction points and get to cloud faster.

• M - Migration strategy

• A - Apps and integrations

• G - Growth and scalability

• I - Identity management

• C - Compliance and security

M - Migration strategy

Start by defining a high-level strategy: understand your current Atlassian landscape, your target state in cloud, and the changes needed to get there.

Assess your current landscape

When auditing your environment, confirm:

• Your deployment mix (all self-managed vs. some cloud already)

• Who uses each product, for what, and how often

• How many instances you have (including any unknown or unused)

• Key customizations (workflows, custom fields, integrations) and ongoing maintenance required

This baseline helps you define the most realistic path forward.

Define your ideal end-state in cloud

Clarify what you want cloud to enable:

• New or improved ways of working you want to enable, including AI apps, workflows and automations

• Whether you’ll clean up or standardize workflows during the move

• Whether your cloud footprint should mirror today’s setup or change (such as consolidate or federate instances). Learn more about some of the use cases for single-instance and multi-instance models in cloud.

To help you map out your current landscape and the changes or optimizations you want to make as you migrate to cloud, use our Cloud Blueprint Exercise.

A - Apps & integrations

Assessing your apps

Before migrating your apps, you'll want to assess cloud compatibility, map out the right migration pathway, and understand what security looks like for cloud apps. Start by reviewing your Marketplace and custom apps to confirm they're compatible with your cloud instance. To do this, connect your Data Center instances to Portfolio Insights to assess your Marketplace and custom apps. This assessment will:

• Give you information on the compatibility of apps for migrations and their availability in cloud.

• Help you decide what apps you want to migrate to your cloud instance.

For those who prefer manual app assessment, we’ve created a manual guide to app assessment you can use.

Migrating apps to cloud

To find out if your Data Center app has an available migration pathway to Cloud, review the list of migration-eligible apps and instructions in our app migration pathway documentation. If there isn’t an equivalent app available, reach out directly to the vendor to see if one is in the works, see if a similar alternative exists in the Marketplace, or re-evaluate if the app is essential for your team at this time.

App security

Unlike the apps you’re using for your self-managed licenses, cloud apps aren't installed behind your own firewall. Instead, most are hosted by the Marketplace or SaaS Partner who developed the app. While our vendors are accountable for their app security, third-party apps are required to:

• Comply with Atlassian's Marketplace security requirements.

• Adhere to Atlassian's security bug fix policy and respond to security issues in a timely manner.

• Meet General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and any relevant regional regulations on data and privacy.

• Undergo daily app scans by Atlassian's Ecoscanner platform, which checks for key security requirements.

• Provide teams with a privacy policy.

The Runs on Atlassian program helps customers identify Forge apps that can benefit enterprise customers with strict data privacy requirements, while the ”Cloud Fortified“ badge highlights apps that participate in the bug bounty program, maintain a complete Privacy & Security tab, and meet higher standards for support and reliability. Both badges are visible on the Atlassian Marketplace. Learn more about these opt-in programs in the Trust Center. You can also review any app's privacy and security practices directly from the Privacy & Security tab on its Marketplace listing.

To support the extensibility and customization of our cloud products, our Atlassian-hosted app development platform, Forge, enables Marketplace Partners and users to build apps with baked-in security features.

G- Growth & scalability

Before starting your migration, evaluate your user count and data size.

Ask yourself:

I - Identity management

Enterprise-grade security and centralized administration start with Atlassian Guard, which covers all your Atlassian cloud apps and collections with a single subscription. Here are some considerations for evaluating whether Atlassian Guard is right for your organization:

• Does your company have security requirements around access management for cloud applications?

• Do you need SAML single-sign-on (SSO) for streamlined access and authentication?

• Do you need automated user lifecycle management connected to your internal directory?

• Do you need centralized visibility and audit logging to address your compliance requirements?

Guard enables scalable governance with features like user provisioning, SAML SSO, Active Directory sync, enforced two-factor authentication (2FA), API token controls, and more. We recommend migrators evaluate Guard as early as possible to have a better understanding of their Atlassian cloud landscape and security requirements. If you still wish to use your previous Active Directory setup, you’ll also need a cloud identity provider to connect with your cloud products.

C - Compliance & security

We take data security, privacy, and compliance very seriously at Atlassian. When moving to the cloud, your teams will take advantage of top-notch data protection, allowing them to focus on innovation more effectively. The first step in that journey is understanding your requirements. We recommend involving your security, legal, and other compliance-related stakeholders early in the process to make sure they understand how Atlassian secures and protects data in cloud.

Plan phase

Now that your initial assessment is complete, it's time to plan how you’ll get to cloud. In the Plan phase, you'll assemble your team, evaluate your options, and build a detailed plan that keeps everyone aligned from preparation through launch. The more thorough your planning, the smoother your execution.

Assembling your internal migration team

A smooth migration starts with clear ownership. Define who's responsible for what, how you'll communicate, and how often you'll check in. We recommend engaging these key roles:

Prepare your teams for the transition

Technology moves your data, but your people are the ones who make the transition stick. Admins, end users, and stakeholders all experience the shift differently and addressing their concerns early reduces resistance and speeds adoption.

Common concerns to plan for:

• Admins – Role changes, new skill requirements, fear of change

• End users – Workflow disruption, retraining, loss of familiar customizations

• Stakeholders – Timeline risk, productivity dips during transition, cost justification

Pair your technical milestones with people-readiness actions: identify champions, communicate early and often, and build a training plan before you flip the switch.

For a full step-by-step guide to implement a successful adoption and change management plan, see the Cloud Adoption Guide.

Migration method

Your migration method determines how you prepare your data to migrate to the cloud. For most teams, especially if they’re migrating 10,000 or less users, we recommend a lift-and-shift method. This method helps reduce migration complexities and timelines, enabling your organization to take advantage of the benefits of cloud faster. Regardless of your migration method, your migration timeline will vary depending on your data size, shape, and complexity.

Lift & Shift

A lift-and-shift migration moves your instance in a single planned downtime window. To keep that window short and predictable, you’ll need strong upfront planning and data prep, including:

• Upfront preparation – Clean up stale data and select which apps, spaces, and projects to move.

• Pre-migration testing – Pre-migrate users and attachments, run test migrations, and conduct UAT.

Phased

A phased migration moves data to the cloud in stages instead of all at once. It can be the best approach for large, complex migrations, but it requires careful planning to avoid delays, cost overruns, and technical issues. Common scenarios for considering a phased migration include:

• Consolidation in cloud, by unifying multiple Data Center instances into a single cloud site

• Federation in cloud by migrating data to multiple cloud environments rather than a single site

• Data segmentation or migrating some Data Center instances to cloud before or after others

Phased migration offers flexibility but comes with inherent risks and technical challenges. Understanding and mitigating these risks will help ensure the success of your migration:

• Configuration drift – Risk of changes to the source or destination site between phases

• Downtime – Longer downtime is expected during phased transitions

• Complex testing – Increased complexity in coordinating phased migration efforts across teams and departments

Build your migration plan

Building out your migration plan should be a team effort and factor in the results from your assessments and the steps listed above. Here are some additional considerations for when you are creating your migration plan:

1. Complete your cloud blueprint. Map your ideal cloud print using the cloud blueprint exercise to define your ideal footprint and how you can get there.

2. Plan your user management setup. If you use a self-managed LDAP or Active Directory as your user authentication method, you must use Atlassian Guard to connect your identity provider and Atlassian cloud products.

   1. Review how users, groups, and permissions are migrated for each product.

   2. See our Guard and cloud migration documentation for setup details.

   3. If you are moving to Government or Isolated Cloud, initial organization and IdP setup must be completed by Atlassian before your org admin can configure SAML/SCIM.

3. Set up your cloud site. Decide whether to use a cloud migration trial, or if you aren't eligible for one, purchase a new cloud site for your migration.

4. Think about cloud adoption from the start. Migration success depends on people actually using cloud — not just moving data there. Start your change management process early and use the Cloud Adoption Toolkit for guidance, templates, and onboarding materials.

Additionally, if you plan to use Atlassian Guard, please do the following:

1. Set up your organization. An organization lets you view all of the Atlassian cloud users at your company (across multiple Atlassian sites and products) in one place, manage your users' accounts, and setup security features like SAML SSO. An organization is automatically created for every site, or you can transfer a site into an existing organization. To access your organization, go to admin.atlassian.com and follow these steps on how to setup, rename, and add products and sites to your organization.

2. Verifying your domain. Verifying your domain will secure ownership of your company’s domain and claim all users' accounts (also referred to as managed accounts) with that same domain. Choose a method and follow the steps on how to verify a domain for your organization. This can take up to 72 hours, so you’ll want to do this early on.

3. We recommend documenting your migration project plan, including planned activities, estimated timings, owners, and dependencies for each task. With your plan in place, it’s time to move on to preparing your teams and data for your migration.

Prep phase

In the Prep phase, we'll walk you through cleaning up your data, getting your environments ready, and making sure your users know what to expect before go-live. This phase can take anywhere from days to months, so give yourself enough time. If you need extra hands, you can explore our Migration Support options to help manage the heavy lifting.

Build your runbook

First, build your runbook, a step-by-step plan that documents key tasks, owners, timing, dependencies, and what to do if something goes wrong. To get started, download our runbook template and modify any tasks as needed. You can watch our short video on how to use the template.

Be sure to call out any dependencies or steps that could block progress if they’re not completed first. Plus, include a clear rollback plan as part of your risk mitigation, so you're covered if anything needs to be reversed.

Prepare your data and environments

Next, make sure your data is clean, your tools are current, and your environments are ready. Here are the steps to get started:

1. Clean up your instances. Not every piece of data on your self-managed instance needs to migrate (such as inactive apps or users, outdated projects, spaces, customizations, workflows, or duplicate data). Cleaning up your data before migrating can help reduce migration downtime and make for less work post-migration. Your cloud readiness assessment in Portfolio Insights will help you choose what data to migrate. (Do this first — it reduces everything downstream).

2. Ensure the Cloud Migration Assistants are up to date. Make sure that you are on the latest version of the Cloud Migration Assistants prior to using them for your migration, because we are constantly improving our migration tooling and expanding their existing capabilities. As part of this effort, older versions of our Cloud Migration Assistants are no longer supported. For a smoother and more stable migration experience, upgrade to the latest version.

3. Complete the pre-migration checklists. Review our detailed pre-migration checklists to make sure your data, environments, and cloud sites are ready to go:

• Jira pre-migration checklist

• Jira Service Management pre-migration checklist

• Confluence pre-migration checklist

• Bitbucket pre-migration checklist

Prepare your people

Now that your environments are cleaned up and ready to go, it's time to get your teams excited about the move to cloud. Here are some steps to get started:

1. Create a comprehensive rollout plan. A rollout plan captures the strategy for how you'll introduce cloud to your users and build enthusiasm for the transition.

2. Build a communication plan. Under the rollout plan, you’ll create a thoughtful communication plan that maintains a consistent rhythm and keeps stakeholders in the loop at every stage of the journey.

3. Decide which channels to use. Site-wide banners in Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Bitbucket help inform users of your upcoming migration and any instructions or resources they should be aware of. Refer to this template page to see examples of the copy to use for email and announcement banners.

4. Prepare users for key changes. Change can feel daunting, but the right preparation will help your teams feel confident from day one. Here are three guides to help prepare your teams for key changes, like navigating new logins:

• Set your users up for success in Atlassian cloud. This guide highlights the most significant differences users will encounter on day one.

• Explore the cloud onboarding and training resource hub. In the Ascend Hub, find these curated resources (docs, courses, demos, blog posts) for building a robust onboarding program.

• Review quick-start product guides for Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence, with getting started tips and best practices.

Cloud Transition Agent

Need help troubleshooting an issue during your migration? The Cloud Transition Agent is an AI-powered helper built into Atlassian Intelligence that can help you diagnose and resolve common migration blockers in real time. Whether you're running into errors during a test migration, need guidance on a specific app compatibility issue, or want help interpreting your migration logs, the Cloud Transition Agent can point you in the right direction.

To get started, open the Cloud Transition Agent from your migration dashboard or ask your Delivery Manager for access.

Test phase

The Test phase is your chance to run a practice migration, validate with UAT, and surface any issues before going live. The more thorough you are here, the smoother your production migration will be.

Test migration

Regardless of company size or migration complexity, we recommend running at least one end-to-end test migration before moving to production. To get started, follow the steps below:

1. Back up your data. We strongly recommend backing up your self-managed instances prior to performing test or production migrations. If there is data in your cloud site already, ensure that data is backed up as well. Review the following documentation for data backup:

   • Backing up data for Jira

   • Backing up data for Jira Service Management

   • Backing up data for Confluence

   • Backing up data for Bitbucket

2. Prepare your cloud site. If you haven’t already, sign up for an Atlassian cloud site and begin setting up your cloud environment. If you are eligible, we recommend getting started with the free cloud migration trial. Get started by following these steps in order:

   1. Choose or upgrade to Atlassian Cloud Premium or Atlassian Cloud Enterprise to access a sandbox for migration testing.

   2. Set up your cloud site baseline (users, permissions, key project/spaces as needed for testing).

   3. Install the apps you plan to use in cloud onto your cloud test site.

   4. Test each app end-to-end in cloud (core workflows + admin/config settings).

   5. Have key stakeholders validate app functionality in the cloud site.

   6. Use the Cloud Migration Assistants to migrate apps and app data once testing is complete.

3. Perform the test migration. With your cloud site set up and apps validated, you're ready to run your first test migration. Use our testing guide to walk through each step and know that you can run as many tests as you need before going live. For larger customers, testing can take about one month minimum, and we encourage you to test more than once.

   1. Complete everything in the pre-migration checklists.

   2. Using our testing guide to walk through your test migration, including identifying the types of users you want to include in the test migration.

   3. Run your test migration! You can run as many test migrations as you need. Reset your site to run multiple tests.

User Acceptance Testing

As part of your test migration, run User Acceptance Testing (UAT) so end users can try their day-to-day tasks in cloud and confirm everything works as expected. UAT helps you catch issues that could impact end users and gives teams time to adjust to working in Cloud.

Once your test migration gives you a clear estimate of how long the production run will take, choose your production migration date. When possible, schedule it overnight, over a weekend, or during another low-usage window to minimize disruption and avoid data inconsistencies. Be sure to pad the timeline for troubleshooting and be mindful of local and national holidays.

Migrate phase

In the Migrate phase, you'll run your production migration, resolve any last-minute issues, and move your users and data to cloud. Make sure your users know what to expect during this transition by keeping them informed of any downtime, and have your team ready to support them once they're in cloud.

Set user permissions to read-only

To prevent confusion during the cutover, lock down your Data Center instance before migrating by putting it into a read-only state (so users can’t make changes during the cutover). View the guidance below:

• How to make Jira read-only

• How to make Jira Service Management read-only

• How to make Confluence read-only

• How to make Bitbucket read-only

• For Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket: Update your site-wide banners to clearly note the site is read-only during migration.

Run the production migration

It’s time to bring out the runbook you created and follow the steps and timing you put together to move your data over to cloud. We highly recommend using our Cloud Migration Assistants to perform your production migration.

Use these step-by-step guides on performing your migration with the Cloud Migration Assistants:

• Using Jira Cloud Migration Assistant to migrate

• Using Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant to migrate

• Using Bitbucket Cloud Migration Assistant to migrate 

Migrate your Marketplace apps

With the app migration pathways you’ve identified, install and migrate the third-party apps you deemed critical for use in cloud.

QA your migrated data

Check to see that your data migrated as expected, and that everything is working properly and in order. Refer step 6 in our testing guide for tips on what to look out for when reviewing your data. If you run into blockers or need guidance throughout the migration phase, contact our migrations support team for help.

Complete post-migration tasks

• Update product links – After migrating Jira or Confluence to Atlassian cloud, some URLs in the recently migrated apps might appear broken as they still point to the old Data Center instances. For instructions, see updating product links after migration.

• Additional Tasks – Depending on your migration, you may have other post-migration tasks that you will need to complete. Check out important migration tasks during test and after production.

Launch phase

Welcome to cloud! The migration is complete, but your work isn’t done yet. Take time to welcome your team, set up your security foundation, and make sure your admins feel confident managing their new cloud responsibilities.

Though cloud adoption has been accounted for throughout your migration journey, now it's time to put your full plan into action. Review the Cloud Adoption Guide for the full rollout playbook, including how to activate champions and implement best practices. Below is a breakdown of how adoption shows up at each post-migration milestone.

Week 1: Welcome your team to cloud

Help your users get their bearings. Remind them why you made the move, confirm they can log in successfully, set expectations for the cloud experience, and walk them through any new processes. Prioritize these quick wins in your first week to build momentum:

• Follow your communication plan. Follow through with the communication plan plan you built in the Prep phase.

• Send a welcome email. Give end-users the essentials in one message, including: new links to bookmark, directions on how they can log in, available FAQs, and who to contact for help.

• Share the quick-start guides. Send our quick start product guides with your team so they understand key UX changes they can expect with the move to cloud.

Weeks 2-4+: Continue driving adoption after go-live

Day one is behind you, but the transition isn't over. Your users are still adapting, your stakeholders need to see results, and your admin team is navigating a new operating model. Use these resources to keep things moving:

End users

• Ramp up end-user training. Use the Cloud onboarding resources and Quick Start Guides for Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence to build confidence with new workflows.

• Nurture your champions network. Identify power users across teams who can model new workflows, answer peer questions, and surface friction points early. See the Cloud Adoption Guide: Champions section for how to stand up this program.

• Gather feedback and iterate. Set up a feedback channel, such as a Jira Service Management request type or dedicated Slack channel, to capture adoption blockers and quickly address them.

Stakeholders and leadership

• Reinforce the "why" with stakeholders. Share early wins, productivity gains, and value metrics with leadership to maintain executive buy-in and justify the investment.

• Track adoption metrics. Monitor login rates, feature usage, and support ticket volume to identify teams that may need additional enablement or outreach.

Admins

• Empower admins with new capabilities. Cloud shifts the admin role from infrastructure upkeep to governance, automation, and strategic enablement. Point admins to the Cloud adoption resources for templates and onboarding materials that support this transition.

• Check out live sessions on Atlassian Learning. Live sessions on the Atlassian Learning Calendar covering everything from admin-level duties like building your change management blueprint to exploring new capabilities like agentic workflows in Rovo.

• Understand the differences between Cloud and Data Center. Explore app-specific training paths for Jira, Confluence, and JSM to deeply understand the key differences and help your users get comfortable with cloud workflows.

• Sharpen your cloud admin skills. Level up your admin practice with guided learning on governance, automation, and platform configuration.

• Learn from your peers. Go to the Atlassian Migration Program community to connect with other admins, ask questions, share lessons learned, and get peer advice.

Implement cloud security best-practices

Cloud governance in the cloud follows a shared responsibility model, which is different than a self-managed setup. Use our best practices, covering identity providers, security protocols, and familiarizing yourself with Atlassian’s role in keeping your data secure, to create a strong foundation for securing your company’s work.

Follow cloud updates

As a Cloud admin, you’ll want to stay up to date on what’s coming across our Cloud platform and products. Review our Cloud roadmap to see what we’re working on, the Release Notes to see what we shipped, and the Atlassian Cloud Marketplace for the latest information and updates to cloud apps.

Data Center end of life

Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence Data Center end of life takes effect on March 28, 2029. One important distinction, Bitbucket Data Center will not end of life. Instead, Bitbucket Data Center will remain available past 2029 through the Bitbucket Hybrid License providing access to both Bitbucket Data Center and Bitbucket Cloud.

Jump over to the Data Center end of life FAQs to look more closely into timelines, product-specific details, and how to prepare, whether you're ready to migrate today or still evaluating your options.