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Migration & delivery
From Data Center to Cloud in 6 Months
How a 2,100-user organization moved off Data Center in six months — and cut total cost of ownership 32%.
01
The challenge
Avaratak partnered with a mid-sized enterprise running a complex Atlassian Data Center estate — roughly 2,100 users, 175 Jira projects, around 1,000 custom workflows, and a heavy app and integration footprint — to execute a full migration to Atlassian Cloud. Six months end to end, 32% lower total cost of ownership in year one, 99.95% uptime after cutover, and zero rollback events.
A mature platform was under strain. Infrastructure and licensing costs were rising, upgrade complexity was increasing and disrupting teams quarterly, administrative overhead was consuming the platform team's capacity, and on-premise hosting was raising compliance and security concerns. Leadership's read was blunt: continuing on Data Center would only increase cost and risk over time. The question wasn't whether to move — it was how to move safely, without losing data or dropping uptime.
02
Our approach
We de-risked the migration before touching production, using a structured three-phase model designed to keep the business aligned at every checkpoint. Assess meant a full environment audit before a single byte moved: app compatibility and migration readiness, workflow and configuration rationalization, data cleanup opportunities, identity and SSO architecture, and stakeholder-aligned success metrics defined upfront.
Migrate was a phased big-bang hybrid approach culminating in an orchestrated weekend cutover. Friday 8:00 PM the system went read-only and the integration freeze began. Friday evening, full backups were captured and integrity-validated. Saturday, the migration ran via Atlassian tools and controlled scripts. Staged validation cycles ran across workstreams through the weekend, and production went live on Atlassian Cloud at 9:00 AM Monday. Data Center stayed online until validation was complete, every high-risk integration had an app-level fallback, and performance had been tested against production-scale data beforehand.
Prove validated outcomes rather than just completing tasks: user acceptance testing across project teams, performance benchmarking against pre-migration baselines, a governance model with admin enablement, and documentation and knowledge transfer for the internal owners who would run it. Four things made the difference, and none were technical — align stakeholders early, simplify before migrating, design for Cloud rather than replicating Data Center patterns, and prove outcomes.
Not a tech project — a business transformation.
03
What we built
- A tested migration planA staged, checkpoint-driven path from Data Center to Cloud with rollback readiness at every step.
- App and integration vettingEvery add-on and connection assessed for Cloud, with app-level fallback strategies for each high-risk integration.
- Identity and SSO architectureDesigned up front rather than retrofitted after cutover.
- A rehearsed weekend cutoverRead-only freeze, validated backups, controlled migration scripts, and staged validation before go-live.
- Governance model and admin enablementSo internal owners could run the platform from day one.
- Documentation and knowledge transferRunbooks and training, not a hand-wave at the end.
04
The results
6 months end-to-end · weekend cutover · measured against success metrics agreed before any technical work began.
- 32% lower total cost of ownershipIn year one — infrastructure spend eliminated and less need for dedicated platform administration.
- 99.95% uptime after migrationWith zero rollback events during or after cutover.
- Upgrade cycles cut from weeks to hoursDeployment and upgrade work that used to consume the platform team now takes an afternoon.
- Faster performance across distributed teamsWith adoption and satisfaction scores up after cutover.
05
In their words
Zero data loss, minimal downtime
Plan your move to Cloud with confidence
The biggest risk isn't the migration itself — it's waiting too long. Every quarter on Data Center compounds cost, risk and complexity. We'll map a path that protects your data and your uptime.