Atlassian's recent Ascend program (Atlassian Cloud migration) has set a firm deadline: Data Center and Server support is ending. For thousands of organizations, cloud migration is no longer optional. The promise is compelling: no infrastructure to maintain, automatic updates, predictable costs. But for enterprises running heavily customized Jira environments, the reality is more complicated. The issue isn't Atlassian's cloud platform itself. It's the dozens (sometimes hundreds) of plugins your organization depends on. Each one represents a separate migration challenge, a different vendor relationship, and a potential gap in your cloud environment. It's a plugin problem. What looked like a straightforward platform migration becomes a complex orchestration of third-party dependencies, many of which don't have clear paths forward.

When extensibility becomes complexity

Over the years, Jira’s success has been driven by its powerful marketplace ecosystem. Thousands of plugins extend Jira’s capabilities, from test management and automation to DevOps integration and reporting. However, this flexibility creates deep dependencies. A typical enterprise Jira setup might rely on 20, 50, or even 100 different plugins — each owned by a different vendor.

When moving to the cloud, these dependencies become a serious plugin problem:

• Not all plugins are available on Atlassian Cloud—many have no equivalent cloud version.
• Feature gaps and incompatibilities exist between Data Center and Cloud editions.
• Data migration paths are fragmented, as Atlassian only migrates core Jira data, making plugin data each vendor’s responsibility.
• Compliance and data residency risks arise since each plugin vendor hosts data separately, sometimes outside approved regions.
• Support and lifecycle management become decentralized, with multiple vendors to coordinate during and after migration.

What was once a unified Jira environment on-premises now becomes a distributed network of separate services, each with its own terms, data policies, and risk profile.

The business impact

For regulated industries or organizations with strict data control policies, this fragmented model introduces unacceptable uncertainty:

• Audit and compliance complexity: Multiple vendors with differing certifications and SLAs.
• Operational risk: Data loss or workflow disruption during plugin migrations.
• Vendor lock-in: Once in the cloud, organizations lose control over plugin versions and update timing.
• Hidden cost and governance overhead: Managing dozens of separate contracts and renewals.

In short, the migration effort often outweighs the anticipated benefits.

Rethinking the approach

If your migration assessment reveals an 18-month timeline, coordination with dozens of vendors, and compliance questions no one can answer, you're seeing the plugin problem clearly. The question becomes: is cloud migration solving your infrastructure challenge, or simply relocating your complexity?

For some organizations, the answer is to reconsider the foundation itself.

A different foundation: Unified software delivery

OpenText offers an alternative built on a different premise: that software delivery tools should work as a coherent system, not an assembly of independent parts.

The OpenText Software Delivery Platform integrates planning, requirements, testing, DevOps, and quality management under a single architecture. One vendor. One contract. One data model.

The practical advantages:

• Unified governance: A single vendor relationship for security reviews, compliance audits, and SLA management.
• Native integration: Capabilities designed to work together, not through APIs and marketplace plugins.
• Flexible deployment: Available both on-premises and in the cloud, preserving data residency and control.
• Coordinated lifecycle: Updates and support managed across the entire platform, not negotiated with separate vendors.

For organizations where data control, regulatory compliance, and operational predictability matter, this model removes the variables that make plugin-heavy cloud migrations so complex.

Simplify the chaos through unity

Atlassian Cloud represents one path forward. But it's not the only path, and for organizations built on extensive plugin ecosystems, it may not be the most practical one.

True modernization isn't about infrastructure location. It's about reducing dependencies, simplifying governance, and maintaining control over your tools and data. That's what a unified platform delivers: fewer integration points, fewer vendors, fewer risks. More control over what matters.

Explore OpenText DevOps Cloud now and simplify the plugin chaos.

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