How do you know when it's time to move to Enterprise?

[Josh Costella]

Our current level is Cloud Premium across the board. 

1200 user tier in Jira

400 agents in JSM

2250 in Confluence

Users across 3 countries.

For those of you who have moved from Premium to Enterprise, what was the deciding factor? It's obviously a significant price difference. How much of a difference has it made for your organization? 

[Jimmy Seddon]

Sorry Josh, I don't have an answer for you but I'm VERY interested to hear the answer to this as well.  We are coming very close to the same numbers you have, but I know we haven't noticed anything (such as performance issues) that would have use investigating Enterprise yet.

[Boris Berenberg - Atlas Authority]

Hey Josh,

We're an Atlassian partner, so while I can't tell you why we would use Enterprise, I can tell you what the driver was for our customers who have bought it. They fall into two camps:

Data Isolation

Depending on customer needs, they need different parts of the org to have access to different parts of the data. On top of that, you may have one instance used internally, and another used by internal and external users. Some companies use this approach to meet their compliance / security / risk goals.

Predictable Pricing

Once you're on Enterprise, you know what it's going to cost no matter how many new sites the team spins up. For some companies it's easier to swallow a higher cost up front, and not have to worry about what happens over the next year.

[Hua Soon SIM _Akeles_]

Boris nailed the drivers for moving to Enterprise concisely.

I would like to add a my 2 cents :D

Data Residency

Since you mentioned 3 countries, Data Residency might be something of value if there is a regulatory requirements.

Cost savings in Marketplace Apps subscriptions

If there is a small group that needs an app, there is no need to subscribe for all the users in the company. That's a common request from customers.

However, the cost of the Marketplace app subscription might increase because each Cloud site will require a separate subscription. So it depends on the profile of usage.

Easier Administration

Sometimes too many cooks spoil the broth. By having separate cloud sites, each site can be tuned specifically to each group of users. 

We noticed for very large sites, there are a lot of noise with many custom fields/projects/schemes. Admins need to do impact analysis carefully.

However, if you only have 1 group of Jira administrators, then multiple Cloud sites may increase your administration efforts. Also it will be more difficult to enforce standardization (which may be solved with some automation apps).

Productivity

A leaner site is definitely faster. Time spent on searching is like paper cuts which tends to be ignored.

Imagine trying to get through 1000 custom fields in the Issue Navigator to explore the list of fields.

However, it will be more painful if a user needs to go multiple Cloud sites to get the work done.

Summary

In summary, you will need to consider the following factors:

1. Users - Your company's organisation structure and the usage
2. Site - The size, complexity and performance of the site
3. Cost - the cost over value 
4. Value - the benefits by converting to Enterprise plan
5. Effort - the effort to set up and manage multiple Cloud sites

[Vero Rivas]

Wow, a very good summary

[Srinatha T]

Awesome. Thanks for sharing

[Lars Bachmann]

Hej @JSH

a recent case where we did support the client was a bank that needed to be BaFin compliant (https://www.atlassian.com/br/trust/compliance/resources/eba). That was their main driver moving on to the Enterprise Cloud. 

The organisational structure of a group with different legal entities can also be a good reason. For example, if companies are to be acquired and later sold again, full integration does not make sense. 

Cheers, Lars

[Alex Ortiz]

I can try and answer.

At the end of the day, it comes down to price and scalability.

The first question I have for you. . . do you currently have Atlassian Access?  If not, then moving to enterprise might not make too much sense.

Currently (I'm assuming a lot of things here since I don't have access to your ORG), but you are paying monthly (or yearly) for:

1200 Jira.

This is assuming you only have 1 Jira instance and all 1200 users work out of that?

400 JSM

Similar assumption, you only have 1 instance?

2250 Confluence

And the same thing, only 1 instance?

If you are using Atlassian Access, there is an additional "fee" on top of your Jira/JSM/Confluence licensing.

Where Enterprise makes sense is the following scenario:

First, you have Atlassian Access.  When you are in the Enterprise, Atlassian Access pricing IS included with your annual price.

Second, you have MULTPLE instances of Jira or JSM or Confluence.

This is important because let's assume you have 3 different Jira instances currently.

Let's assume your 1200 users are access the 3 different instances (Please note instances = unique URL, not Jira projects).

If your 1200 users were to access all 3 instances, then you are NOT paying for 1200 users. . but rather you are paying for 1200 * 3.  Add Atlassian Access for each user * 1200.

If you had Enterprise, you would pay for the 1200 users and now they can access ALL your Jira instances for the same price as opposed to paying by the user by product.  The price of Atlassian Access is also now rolled into that single price.

Please note that you would also have to do this for your JSM and your Confluence licensing.

Long story short, in my opinion, Enterprise licensing ONLY makes sense if you have multiple users accessing multiple Jira's or Confluences.  Because you pay for each user to access each instance which means you are paying for the same user many times.  With Enterprise, for that product (Jira), you only pay for that single user to access all.

Based on the way you asked the question, I'm assuming you only have 1 instance and probably don't have Atlassian Access, so I would say it's not worth it for you.  But that's given some very limited knowledge of your environment.

[Josh Costella]

Thanks for the great response, Alex. Yes, we have 1 instance. Spinning up multiple instances (sites) has not been a need for us. At least yet. Maybe someday if we get really really big and have acquisitions where multiple sites could be thrust upon us. 

[Pramodh M]

We need to decide Enterprise-Grade Plan based on several other factors @Josh Costella 

Here are deciding factors

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/platform/which-atlassian-cloud-plan-is-right-for-you

[Deleted user]

We (~50 users, sensitive industry sector) really need user activity tracking / auditing.

Unfortunately this is an enterprise only feature and enterprise is 800+ users minimum.

So an SME cant be an enterprise in Atlassian world ! The clue is in the name !

Another reason ill be pushing migration to another system as quickly as possible.