An Atlassian Marketplace Partner perspective: Why choose Cloud?

What is Atlassian Cloud?

The tools from most software manufacturers have been active for over twenty years, have been hosted on customers' infrastructures, the famous "behind the firewall." On the other hand, with the explosion of cloud technologies these last ten years, new software manufacturers are 100% cloud-native while older manufacturers have had to move to the Cloud to stay in the loop with current manufacturers. 

In terms of costs, a cloud product is infinitely more competitive than a "behind the firewall" deployment. 

In terms of capability, there are currently a few things that can be done on the infrastructure that you can't do in the Cloud. Atlassian Cloud hosts a version of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and more, available on a subscription model where Atlassian itself manages its deployment, maintenance, and operations.

Our Atlassian Marketplace Partner perspective on Atlassian Cloud

At Deiser, we have been developing custom apps for Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Bamboo since 2008. For the Marketplace, since 2012, it wasn't until 2015 that we began developing apps for Jira Cloud. Although the transition was challenging at the beginning due to the capabilities the Cloud option offered at that time, both in terms of features and performance, today, we prefer to develop 100% in the Cloud rather than on a Server or Data Center for the following reasons:

1. Continuous Discovery 

In modern development, it's almost unthinkable to consider developing a product without user feedback, whether you are B2B or B2C. In our case (B2B), obtaining user feedback to enhance our products is challenging. Adding to this challenge, when developing on a Server or Data Center and launching (for example) an in-app survey with a new release, it takes weeks or even months to start receiving responses. The reason is that we depend on the system administrators' time to update their instances. However, in the Cloud, if we want to gather feedback through an in-app survey, all our users can access the feature and survey within a day; that way, we get results almost instantly. Listening to the user is much easier in the Cloud than in a Server or Data Center

The same goes for data visualization and metrics. When we add a new event or property to the analytics tool for the Data Center, it takes months to start gathering data that allows us to conclude, whereas in the Cloud, we begin to obtain data immediately upon deployment.

2. Continuous integration and continuous delivery

In our team, we're enthusiasts of Agile and DevOps culture, and that's why we enjoy operating, monitoring, and controlling our systems. At the same time, as a challenge for technical excellence, we love a work environment that allows us to continuously integrate our code and deploy it daily, as many times as necessary, and automate it. Working on a Server or Data Center requires dealing with multiple versions, branches, and environments. In contrast, developing in the Cloud enables us to become a truly Agile team because we ensure the code integrated today is deployed today.

3. Security

The Cloud security requirements for Marketplace partners are more rigorous as the stakes are more significant. When developing for Server/DC, you delegate a considerable part of the security to the customer and their infrastructure. When developing for Cloud, it's our responsibility; therefore, everyone else is protected by mitigating a security flaw reported by a customer.

On the other hand, it's much easier to participate in programs like Bug Bounty or hire a penetration testing service when in the Cloud. Additionally, Atlassian's security requirements for Cloud apps are much higher. They have an internal program called Cloud Fortified to ensure the apps' security, performance, and quality.

4. Reliability

Reliability is another term demanded through SLOs by Atlassian in its Cloud Fortified Program. We cannot monitor in Server or Data Center because those services are "behind the firewall." However, in the Cloud, we have to take responsibility and want to. The team needs this information in a DevOps environment to prioritize potential issues detected in logs. Having firsthand access to all the information associated with system degradation or service interruptions is crucial for providing better support and reducing the time from problem detection to resolution.