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It's been a long time since the Rolling Stones were telling people "Get Off of My Cloud", and times have certainly changed; nowadays, we move more and more "into the Cloud". But what seems so simple for people privately can cause quite the headache in a professional context. Especially when it comes to sensitive topics such as data protection or information security in general. And so it's not surprising that in many countries, many companies that are considering moving their operations into the Cloud are hesitant at first. Questions about topics like security and performance weigh heavily on the minds of the decision-makers.
These concerns are understandable, as there have been repeated discussions and negative examples in the past. Reason enough for Seibert Media to take a closer look - and to do some "myth-busting"! Because many things you might think you know about the Cloud are not accurate (anymore). And one thing is clear: the future is looking up!
So join us in a journey into the clouds and read in our second article in our "Cloud Mythbusters" series what performance is like in the Atlassian Cloud (which, by the way, is not limited to the Atlassian Cloud!). The other articles will deal with the following topics:
- What's the Deal with Data Security?
- Bye-Bye Server Apps – Hello Cloud?
- Should I Change Anything in My Change Management?
- What Happens to my Data?
- What Does My Admin do When There's Less Admin to Admin?
- Can I still Customize my Cloud Instance?
- Will Cloud Still Work Well When My Company Gets Bigger?
In every blog article, we'll get to the bottom of each myth together, and we'll see what's left of them afterwards… And now: enjoy reading and "busting myths"!
Gartner’s 2021 forecast for worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services estimated a 23.1% growth to $332.2 billion, up from $270 billion in 2020. Businesses large and small have either already made the move, are in the process of, or are considering the migration of services from on-prem to the cloud.
Although the move is on for many, there are still some nagging myths that exist prompting reluctance. Some of these myths are centered around the performance of cloud platforms vs on-prem infrastructure. As you would guess, nothing can bring a business to its knees like a slowdown in productivity.
Performance is always one of, if not the most important criteria monitored by most companies. In fact, network performance is currently the #1 reason companies move to the cloud, according to a survey by Internap Corporation (INAP). When you add in uptime guarantees, automatic scaling, and automatic performance upgrades, it makes total sense.
This being the case, let’s explore two of the most common myths around performance and the cloud.
Myth #1: The cloud is slower than on-prem
Atlassian is committed to providing best-in-class cloud services via the Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, offering an always-on, highly secure environment. Privacy, security, and reliability are essential. Reducing your maintenance, hardware, and operational costs versus an on-prem solution are added benefits.
Now, not every cloud platform is created equal. One may excel at security, another at expandability, and a third may be better in terms of overall capacity and throughput. A key component required for all is performance.
Today’s premiere, best-in-class providers demonstrate improved performance metrics versus when services were provided on-prem. According to 76% of Enterprise leaders, moving to the cloud has improved the speed of IT delivery services. Atlassian, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), is no exception. AWS brought in a record $14.8 billion in net sales in the second quarter of 2021. A frontrunner in the cloud computing platform space, AWS has grown steadily in the 30% range over the last year. Amazon’s AWS controls nearly twice the cloud market as their nearest competitor, over one-third.
AWS is consistently ranked among the best-in-class cloud infrastructure providers. Atlassian, as hosted on AWS, then leverages economies of scale to bring the best technology, latest improvements, and deep expertise to thousands of customers. Atlassian cloud services consistently offer 99.9% to 99.95% uptimes, guaranteed.
As a result, Atlassian encourages its customers to practice full transparency, a “proof is in the pudding” mindset. Their Statuspage not only demonstrates the historical and real-time performance of their client’s systems, but it also often reduces the incidents of support by allowing customers to identify issues on their own.
Companies from the likes of Dropbox, GoToMeeting, and Shopify see the benefits of communicating this information with their end-users;
- Faster incident communications - Incident communications are +50% faster than their previous method.
- Fewer questions - A 24% decrease in incident-related support tickets during downtime.
- More customer trust - 67% reported an increase in user trust.
- Less time wasted - 80% of support teams say they’re more efficient during incidents.
And for those who like to see for themselves, Atlassian’s status page provides real-time system availability and performance updates. Check the current status here.
Myth #2: An outage in cloud would be a nightmare for my team
On-prem or in the cloud, this is a nightmare scenario for any organization.
Here are some numbers for you: $5,600 - $9,000 per minute.
That is the average cost to companies during an outage or downtime. And of course, that is just the financial cost. This does not factor in the intangible costs of stress and frustration for all involved, most especially your support team.
Atlassian’s cloud hosting infrastructure offers multi-levels of redundancy and scales elastically. In the instance where an issue should occur, the infrastructure has built-in tools to reduce latency and maintain their high levels of reliability while continuing to scale to meet your organization's needs. Using six distinct geographic locations around the world to host their cloud infrastructure, Atlassian has successfully reduced instances of latency for their customers. Working within standards defined by SOC2, ISO 27002, and ISO 22301, the Atlassian development lifecycle adheres to strict controls and practices.
Additionally, to help ensure that a uniform uptime is maintained and disruptions are minimized, Atlassian’s Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery programs provide data and product safeguards. In the instance where a customer’s data would need to be recovered, daily application and database backups are provided for all Atlassian cloud products. Users also have the opportunity to join their Trust & Security group within the Atlassian Community. This provides direct communication from the Security team where information and best practices for the use of Atlassian products and services are made available.
As another example of Atlassian’s continued focus and support efforts, their Premium and Enterprise cloud plans include a financially-backed uptime guarantee. What does that mean in a nutshell? Atlassian guarantees a 99.9% uptime for Premium and 99.95% uptime for Enterprise subscribers respectively each month. If it’s confirmed the actual uptime falls outside this Service Level Commitment (SLC), you’ll be credited back between 5% and 50% of your subscription fees depending on the downtime. You can find additional information here.
In addition to their steady track record, they are the ones getting the 2am call when a system goes down, not you.
"With Atlassian Cloud, I'm not waking up in the middle of the night because a node in the data center was down. That's a hugely positive aspect for me and my customers because I can ensure the best SLA possible."
Laurent Bordier, Atlassian Service manager for Lucid Motors
With physical infrastructure and data located onsite, for the majority of small and mid-size enterprises (SME’s), on-prem systems lend themselves to being more susceptible to data loss in the instance of a disaster, natural or man-made. When data security, storage, and uptime are “your thing” as in the case of a cloud platform, securing the infrastructure of these facilities is of the utmost importance.
To further the commitment to providing updates, information, and transparency into their operations and development, Atlassian offers quarterly feature updates. With everything from data management (backup & restore, data residency, etc.), compliance (GDPR, data classification, HIPAA, etc.), to security and performance, and many more, you can easily find the topics that interest you most.
As always, if you would like to try Atlassian Cloud or have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at Seibert Media.
Further Reading
- All published "Cloud Mythbusting" blogs
- Requirements for modern incident management: automation, transparency, structured learning
- Synchronize your Jira Instances in 5 Steps: The Complete 2021 Guide
