The largest forced migration in enterprise SaaS is now underway. On March 30, 2026, Atlassian closed Data Center purchases to new customers, starting a three-year wind-down that ends with full end of life on March 28, 2029, when remaining Data Center licenses expire and transition to read-only status, according to Atlassian's official migration announcement. For the thousands of organizations still running Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management on their own infrastructure, the question is no longer whether to move — it is when, and at what cost.
What are the hard deadlines?
Atlassian has published three dates that matter, and the distinction between new and existing customers is the hinge. Per the company's announcement, any organization that held a paid Data Center subscription on or before March 30, 2026 counts as an existing customer and keeps purchasing rights for two more years. Everyone else is already locked out: new customers can no longer purchase or request quotes for the affected products, and self-service trial generation has ended.
- March 30, 2026 — new customers lose the ability to buy Data Center products or generate trials.
- March 30, 2028 — existing customers can no longer buy new Data Center licenses, expansions, or Marketplace apps.
- March 28, 2029 — end of life; licenses expire and become read-only.
The Marketplace is decaying ahead of the platform itself. OpenText's analysis notes that new Data Center app submissions ended on December 16, 2025, and plugin vendors are actively shifting engineering resources away from Data Center versions. Even organizations planning to ride out their licenses until 2028 will feel app stagnation well before then.
The February 2026 price increase raised the cost of waiting
Staying put got more expensive before the exits closed. Atlassian applied an approximately 15% across-the-board price increase to all Data Center products effective February 17, 2026, with some legacy pricing tiers seeing increases of roughly 18-40%, according to Deviniti's compilation of migration cost statistics. Current Jira Data Center list pricing runs $59,000 per year at 500 users, $100,000 at 1,000 users, and $388,000 at 5,000 users. Every renewal between now and a migration is paid at the raised rates, which is precisely the pressure the pricing is designed to create.
How much does migrating to Atlassian Cloud actually cost?
The list price of a Cloud subscription is the easy part. OpenText's core warning is that "cloud pricing reflects your license cost in a steady state; it doesn't reflect what it takes to get there." Most enterprises run Data Center and Cloud in parallel for 18 to 24 months during migration, effectively doubling licensing spend for that window. Marketplace apps compound the problem: Cloud plugins are priced per user across the entire licensed user base, including users who never open the tool, so app costs can grow faster than core licensing after the move.
The return side of the ledger has real numbers behind it. Deviniti cites Forrester Total Economic Impact research finding a 230% ROI over three years for enterprise organizations on Cloud Enterprise, with a payback period under six months and a $2.4 million net present value for a modeled 2,750-user organization. Post-migration operational gains include a 90% reduction in reliability-related support tickets and a 42% reduction in onboarding time after centralizing administration.
| Factor | Data Center (today) | Atlassian Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Jira, 1,000 users | $100,000/year list | Subscription per user; Forrester models <6-month payback on Cloud Enterprise |
| Price trajectory | +15% Feb 2026; legacy tiers up to 18-40% | Per-user growth plus per-user Marketplace app pricing |
| App ecosystem | New DC app submissions ended Dec 16, 2025 | Active, but each app billed across full user base |
| Hard stop | Read-only after March 28, 2029 | None |
Compliance and marketplace risks buyers underestimate
Security certifications do not transfer with the migration. OpenText points out that while Atlassian holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, those certifications belong to Atlassian, not to the organizations running workloads on its platform — a shared-responsibility gap that compliance teams must close with their own controls and documentation. Third-party Marketplace apps add a second layer of exposure: many process data outside Atlassian's direct environment, require independent security vetting, and offer more limited forensic visibility than the on-premises tools they replace.
For large deployments, Atlassian is subsidizing the path. The company's FastShift program provides complimentary migration acceleration for organizations managing 1,000 or more seats, alongside Portfolio Insights assessments and free Cloud trials that run in parallel with an active Data Center subscription.
What should Data Center customers do before 2028?
The window for a calm migration is narrower than the 2029 deadline suggests. OpenText recommends beginning migration planning by mid-2027 to avoid time pressure, and the 18-24 month parallel-running norm means a team starting in mid-2027 is already cutting it close. The 2028 purchasing cutoff is the operative deadline for anyone whose user count is still growing, since expansions become impossible after that date.
Three moves make sense this quarter. First, inventory Marketplace apps and check each one's Cloud availability and per-user pricing, because app parity failures are the most common source of migration surprises. Second, model dual-running costs explicitly rather than comparing steady-state list prices. Third, existing customers with growth plans should weigh pulling license expansions forward before March 30, 2028, while pushing the migration project itself onto a definite timeline. The 15% price increase already made waiting more expensive; every renewal from here is a payment for optionality that expires in 2029 regardless.