Over the last half-year, the use of Atlassian’s tools is evolving and expanding
COVID-19 has rapidly accelerated the digital transformation of businesses by several years. However, as companies shift to digital-only workflows, DevOps teams and the increasing number of departments they interact with face numerous challenges. Effective digital communication and collaboration are often vital to overcoming these challenges, and executives now pay a lot more attention to the tools enabling both.
Millions of users globally rely on the Atlassian ecosystem every day. In particular, Atlassian tools such as Jira being used to improve software development, project management, team collaboration and code quality. As the world has shifted to more collaborative digital work over the last half-year, the use of Atlassian’s tools is evolving and expanding.
We recently conducted research to understand more about how users globally are using their Atlassian tools. The “2020 State of the Atlassian Ecosystem Report” surveyed 700 professionals using these tools for their organization to find out how, where, when and with what other technology they are deploying Atlassian solutions. Many interesting findings emerged from the research, and here are three major takeaways.
Atlassian Tool Usage Seeps Into the Enterprise
A large proportion of Atlassian users are adopting its tools to achieve business goals from improving productivity and efficiency to change management as part of their digital transformation. This is driving the introduction of Atlassian tools beyond DevOps and into the hands of non-technical teams.
For example, 80% of users said at least one business team in their organization uses Atlassian tools. These teams include customer support, design, sales and marketing and operations. Furthering this trend, Atlassian and Slack announced last month that they would be conducting joint app and integration development, allowing users to connect platform services. Our research found 46% of Atlassian users utilize both Atlassian and Slack solutions. These kinds of announcements will only increase the collaborative use of these tools between DevOps and the teams they collaborate with.
Adopting Agile Development Methodologies & DevOps Strategies
A key part of a company’s digital transformation is adopting agile methodologies and clear DevOps strategies. According to our research, 77% of Atlassian users believe their organization has implemented agile principles in some way. And 48% have a DevOps strategy in place, with an additional 29% planning to implement a clear DevOps strategy in the next three years. As workers are forced remote and developers are distributed virtually, iterative development between these teams is increasingly important. This can only happen when a clear DevOps strategy has been put in place and digital feedback can be gathered and implemented in a well-defined way.
Taking a Hybrid Approach to Deployment
There are several different deployment options available depending on the business needs of users of Atlassian tools. How companies choose to use, deploy and configure the tools that they use. In addition, parts of the same organization often have different business drivers for using Atlassian tools. For example, one function may need a public-facing help desk with access from anywhere in the world, while another may need a highly secure and internal-only solution.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to address personalized organization needs. For instance, 9% of users are leveraging a hybrid model of Atlassian Cloud (SaaS) and a self-hosted solution (Server/data center), which means combining the advantages of cloud and self-hosting through multiple deployment models.
These findings demonstrate how the Atlassian ecosystem is evolving and expanding in our new normal. As digital transformation takes hold across different organizations of every size, industry and level of technical sophistication, the need for flexibility is only going to increase to accommodate more digital-only workflows.