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Collaboration tools cost optimization & consulting
The customer faced a future steep cost increase for their Jira and Confluence instances and was looking for ways to reduce these expenses. Itransition helped the customer evaluate Atlassian alternatives and provided them with two distinct action plans to reduce their Atlassian TCO.
$1M+
annual Atlassian license costs saved
2x
reduction in Atlassian products TCO
180+
collaboration tools studied during consulting
All technologies used
Engagement model
About the customer
The customer is a non-profit center for scientific research. For 10+ years, they have been using Atlassian Confluence and Jira, utilized by 15,000+ distributed users from institutions across 40 countries.
Industry
Non-profit
Specialization
Scientific research
Geography
Operating across 40+ countries
The challenge
The customer faced a 15x yearly cost increase for all Jira instances and an 8x increase for Confluence instances in use due to a significant rise in prices for Atlassian products. To avoid the increase in costs, the customer wanted to consider other options and needed a consulting partner to advise them on both the Atlassian products ecosystem and other off-the-shelf collaboration tools on the market.
The solution
At a glance
We reviewed multiple alternatives to Jira and Confluence, creating a rating system to compare the tools based on the customer’s requirements, and proposed the two best scenarios for the customer to implement to meet their TCO reduction goals.
Discovery
We began by gathering initial information about the company and its processes, as well as the customer’s requirements and expectations. We also interviewed the customer’s procurement team to collect the details about the existing Atlassian billing terms and existing Jira and Confluence configurations and customizations.
By the end of the discovery stage, we had lists of high-level, specific requirements for the desired solutions:
- Support of an on-premises self-hosted version
- Scalability to support 15,000+ users
- LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and SSO (Single Sign-On) integration
- License costs close to the customer’s current ones
- Extensive knowledge base and community support
- Intuitive UI and a gentle learning curve
The customer also provided mandatory and optional features specific for both project management and content management products that we used for the selected products’ comparison.
Research
We conducted two rounds of solutions’ review and held checkpoint meetings at the end of each with the customer. During the first review round, we picked 30 solutions for issue tracking and 20 solutions for content management that fit the customer’s high-level requirements.
In the second review round, we studied these solutions against the mandatory and optional requirements to shortlist four alternatives for issue tracking and three solutions for content management. Then, we conducted deep research, aligning the functionality of the selected products with the customer’s specific requirements.
Evaluation
Our consultants created a comparison matrix with tools’ pros and cons, as well as the rating based on the following criteria:
- Capability to meet the customer’s Shall and Should requirements
- Discounts and community licenses
- Complexity of migration from Jira and Confluence
- End-user training complexity
- Ease of use
- License costs
- Extensibility
- Support offerings
Each criterion was then broken down into weighted areas and given a 1/ 0.75/ 0.5/ 0.25 or 0 rating. The summarized ratings of products showed how well the solutions correspond to the set requirements. Finally, we presented the extended evaluation report, the products’ demo, and comparison results to the customer.
Recommendations
Taking into account the collected data, research results, and communications with the customer, Itransition came up with two options.
Option 1: stay with Atlassian
Since the customer is a non-profit organization, the best option would be to apply for a free Atlassian Data Center Community subscription.
The Atlassian Community license offers charitable non-profit organizations self-managed Data Center licensing at zero cost and a 75% discount on cloud subscriptions. Eligible organizations are non-commercial, non-government, non-political, non-academic, and those without religious affiliation. To obtain the Community license, organizations need to submit application forms with answers to basic questions about their activity and values.
Therefore, if the customer continued using Atlassian, they could keep the existing Atlassian setup for significant cost savings and avoid data migration and user training costs. To cut annual admin Jira and Confluence TCO, we also recommended Jira instances consolidation.
Option 2: switch to alternative solutions
Another option is migrating to YouTrack to replace Jira for issue-tracking and switch from Confluence to XWiki for content management. For this option, we provided detailed product descriptions and demos, installation instructions, a step-by-step migration plan, and roundabouts for implementing mandatory features that aren’t supported out of the box.
Additionally, we calculated migration costs and timelines, 10-year TCO (counting in a 5% inflation rate and loyalty discounts), and provided a list of technology partners to support product adoption.
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The outcome
Itransition performed a 360-degree alternative product evaluation of a switch from Jira and Confluence and proposed two ways of reducing their Atlassian licensing spend. The implementation of our recommendations is expected to result in:
01
$1M+ saved in annual subscription costs due to the customer using a free Atlassian Community license
02
50% reduction of the annual Jira and Confluence TCO costs thanks to Itransition’s recommendations
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