Atlassian suite optimization for a pharma solutions provider

Solution

Itransition’s team analyzed Norstella’s existing Atlassian setup, advised them on solution optimization, prepared the migration to Atlassian Cloud Enterprise, and provided post-migration support, solution finetuning, and license management.

Analysis

Itransition’s experts analyzed the existing Atlassian suite’s setup and environments. We also studied the existing processes and collaborated with Norstella’s decision-makers responsible for different system parts to gather the necessary information about their established processes. Additionally, our team assessed daily workflows of customer admins and tasks they performed.

Moreover, we checked if the setup was compliant with Atlassian’s best practices. We analyzed five different brands using five Jira instances under separate organizations and found out they were utilized in a scattered manner, distributed among different Atlassian products, which complicated day-to-day workflows and business expansion. It also resulted in administration, billing, security, and other overheads. For example, Norstella paid double or even triple fees to provide access to the same user in different instances. Last but not least, the existing solution wasn’t scalable, so adding more organizations was difficult.

To resolve these issues, we prepared an optimization proposal for the customer, outlining two options: switching to the Atlassian Cloud Enterprise license or keeping the existing instance consolidation model.

Atlassian Cloud Enterprise allows adding an unlimited number of product instances under one organization and paying for unique users with access to the whole environment without duplicates.

Instance consolidation, on the other hand, unites existing Norstella sites into one instance, centralizing administration and billing efforts, optimizing the current license costs for products and apps, removing duplicated users, and standardizing workflows.

Itransition’s team prepared a detailed analysis featuring the benefits of both options. We also made a comparison table with such criteria as the number of instances, users, billing cycle, data residency, Marketplace apps, Atlassian access, support, guaranteed uptime SLA, and license costs.

Our team also outlined the Atlassian license costs breakdown, development efforts costs, and the project timeline, allowing the customer to weigh different factors when choosing the best option for optimization.

Itransition’s comparison and analysis showed that instance consolidation would incur unforeseen overheads related to migration, optimization, coordination, and collaboration, as well as technical, customization, and managerial efforts. Coupled with a lengthy migration period of at least 12 months, these were serious drawbacks to instance consolidation.

In contrast, Atlassian Cloud Enterprise allows for instance management involving only a few managerial steps, communications alignment, and settings tuning, which reduces the reliance on central IT teams for product-level admin tasks. It also offers a separate space for each brand with its own managerial rules and customizations based on their needs.

Together with the unlimited product instances in the same plan, per-user license cost optimization, minimized disruption after mergers, faster response time for critical issues, phone support, no added compliance and security costs, Atlassian Cloud Enterprise presented a better way to optimize the customer’s Atlassian suite.

Migration

Once the customer decided to go with Atlassian Cloud Enterprise, Itransition set up a proof-of-concept environment, gathered Marketplace app requirements, and configured Atlassian Access for the Norstella organization. Itransition’s team proposed and implemented the following logic for the solution:

We also prepared the migration to Cloud Enterprise. First, we formalized Norstella’s goals and requirements and put together formal documentation for both the Atlassian and the customer’s side of the solution. Then, we created a process roadmap to ensure seamless migration and prepared all instances for migrating to one organization, resolving issues with settings and turning off certain features, making them available for migration. Lastly, we set up user access rules and permissions. Since some of the migration-critical functionality was only available to Atlassian, Itransition requested Atlassian’s assistance in migrating disjointed Jira Software and Confluence instances to one Atlassian organization.

Fine-tuning & licence management

Having prepared the migration and overseen it, Itransition routinely performs Atlassian license management, reevaluating packages and pricing plans, setups, and configurations to ensure their cost-efficiency. We also carry out cost optimization on license use and revoking opportunities. The ongoing tune-up of Atlassian solutions allows for:

• Usage of the most suitable subscriptions and configurations
• Awareness about Atlassian offering changes
• Total overseeing of license procedures, paperwork, and payments

Itransition’s team also helps with solution customization based on changing business needs and offers user and admin training for the expanding solution upon request.