If you are considering getting a new IT service, the question that is always asked is ‘cloud or server?’. As they both have their own pros and cons, you can sometimes feel as though you don’t know which is the correct route to take. Valiantys, however, offers a middle ground for the Atlassian suite of which Valiantys will host a server instance for you on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. This means that you get all the benefits of the server instance without having the overhead of maintaining the server and service yourself.
Can I find all my Atlassian products and apps on the cloud?
So why use the Valiantys cloud over the Atlassian cloud? Firstly, to gain the most functionality from the Atlassian suite (such as Jira & Confluence) with the apps which are often installed. On both the Atlassian Cloud and on-premises solutions, the apps are extremely easy to install with it just being: search for the app within an application and click the install button. However, one of the major differences is that the cloud service is not as mature as the on-premises solution, there simply aren’t as many apps available.
Currently there are less than 1,000 apps available for the Atlassian cloud, while there are over 3,000 server apps; meaning that if the Atlassian product does not offer the functionality ‘out of the box’, it is likely you’ll need an app and you’ll have more chances to find the appropriate one if you run a server solution. You also need to be aware that the cloud apps cannot benefit from all the plugin modules available on the server, so they generally offer fewer features. For example, no custom field types on Cloud.
It’s up to the Marketplace vendor to decide whether or not they want to propose a cloud version of their app. The development followed by the Atlassian certification process may take a while. This is why not all the best selling apps are cloud certified yet.
In addition to this, Atlassian does not offer its entire suite of applications within the Atlassian cloud. An example of these is Bamboo, Fisheye, and Crucible as these are server only applications. So if you need these products, you’ll have to use server licenses meaning you won’t be able to have them hosted on the Atlassian cloud with your other products and apps. One option could be to host these on-premises licenses on Valiantys cloud’s AWS platform to benefit from the cloud advantages.
Reliability, security & scalability
Moving onto the Application versioning, as the Valiantys Cloud is hosted on an on-premises solution in AWS, it takes the burden of managing the service from you the client. You are the one deciding when to update your instance and apps so that you can benefit from new functionalities, allows stability for any apps and/or integration that may not be compatible with the latest versions.
If you use the Atlassian cloud instance you won’t have this choice, the upgrades and updates will be decided and done automatically by Atlassian; adding to this, Atlassian tests these releases via A/B testing and there are often issues after major cloud releases. Furthermore, as Valiantys hosts the instance in AWS, you will have the choice of which Amazon data center to have you instance hosted on. Where your data is stored is a key security factor.
Sadly, even though Atlassian has partnered with Amazon to host its services, you cannot choose where you would like the data to be stored, however, Atlassian is working to improve this. They currently state that ‘they will try’ to have the data as close to your location as possible to maximize the performance of the application. With the Atlassian cloud, your data can be hosted in one of 5 data centers around the world: USA, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. So, for example, if you are located in Canada or Switzerland you won’t be able to host data in your country for legal issues. If you do choose the Valiantys cloud, you can decide on the location of your data which can be hosted in the USA, Canada, Ireland, Germany, France or Switzerland.
In addition to this, Valiantys cloud has advanced options for improved security, infrastructure and functional support such as:
- SSO for all hosted Atlassian applications, VPN tunneling, data encryption on our servers
- Failover, Cold-Standby, and Disaster Recovery Plan to minimize the impact of technical issues on your Atlassian solution’s availability
- An Atlassian Data Center deployment option when you need high availability and performance for your mission-critical instances
An additional bonus for Valiantys Cloud – If your instances are mission-critical, you’ll want to have high availability, disaster recovery, and high performance. This can be provided by the Data Center versions of the Atlassian products. However, these are server licenses and not cloud licenses. So the only way to have them hosted is to benefit from Valiantys cloud on AWS.
Customizability
You can customize more of your environment with the Valiantys cloud, an example of this is that you can have custom domain names. The Atlassian cloud currently allows you to change the site subdomain with custom domains coming later this year (this was announced during the Atlassian Summit in Las Vegas earlier this year).
For Confluence, you won’t be given the possibility to use your custom theme.
Users & User Management
The Valiantys cloud can connect user directories such as Active Directory and can have an unlimited amount of users. Whereas the Atlassian cloud is somewhat limited and can integrate with other user directories such as Active Directory using Atlassian Access1*. There is, however, a restriction with the Atlassian cloud of up to 10,000 users as opposed to the Valiantys Cloud which has no restrictions.
Product Administration
Because Atlassian cloud products are installed and configured for you, the System Administrator role has a unique set of permissions and management capabilities on the cloud.
Site-admins are the users who manage a site. The following permissions are currently available to site-admins:
- All permissions assigned to the ‘administrators’ group for the product(s) you have
- Access to user management (ability to create new users, assign users to groups, grant product access, etc.)
- Access to the billing information
When hosted with Valiantys, administrators may have full access to the database and support of the infrastructure, Atlassian products, and user community, and are responsible for any other tasks that may encompass an organization’s Server Admin role.
To learn more about being an administrator for Jira or Confluence Server, refer to the corresponding documentation:
Pricing
Benefits that are experienced when moving to the cloud is that there is less of an investment that has to be made. This is because the team that would be responsible to run the application can focus on other items, along with not having to purchase additional equipment and ensure that they are running correctly.
When comparing the pricing models for the Valiantys cloud and Atlassian cloud, both are very similar, where both can be billed monthly and annually**.
Valiantys cloud also offers multiple packages best suited to your needs. You can see more details on our webpage dedicated to the cloud offering.
Support
When comparing the support given with the Valiantys and Atlassian cloud, we see that in regards to SLAs, they are similar. However, where the support differs is functional support. Atlassian does not currently offer functional support whereas the specialist knowledge from the Valiantys support team can assist or complete any functional change to your instances.
Ready to make the jump to the cloud?
The process of migrating from the Atlassian cloud to the Valiantys cloud could not be simpler for a client. You would have a dedicated consultant complete a technical analysis of your environment and discuss your requirements; at the end of the analysis you will receive a report containing the following:
- Analysis of the source environment (including plugins)
- Risk analysis of the migration
- Pre-migration checks to be completed
- Post-migration checks to be completed
- Throughout migration, all steps are completed
Once the report has been discussed and signed-off by the client, the process of migrating will start as agreed in the report. To mitigate risk and to follow best practices, the process discussed will be completed within a staging environment and then again in a production environment; all at a time that is satisfactory with the client. The entire process can take as little as 3 consultancy days!
If you are ready to make the jump to the Valiantys cloud or the Atlassian cloud, get in touch with Valiantys – as one of the leading Atlassian Platinum Solution partners in the ecosystem, we can ensure that your instance is set up and/or migrated without a problem!
Contact us!
*This may incur additional cost.
** Depending on Valiantys hosting plan.
1[https://www.atlassian.com/enterprise/cloud/access][13/05/19]
