Following an evaluation of their practices, Digital Information Services Division within the Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate of the Scottish Government engaged our services to find out whether a cloud migration would be suitable for them. A main motivator for this change was the fast-approaching end of their server support, which encouraged the client to look at more cost-efficient avenues for the future.
One main advantage of Atlassian Cloud is the elimination of manual upgrades and software maintenance, which reduced the overall cost of ownership. In addition to this, by migrating all their projects onto the cloud, the client was able to achieve a level of standardisation within their department. By keeping their users on the same applications, a vast majority of inter-departmental communication and collaboration can be streamlined.
About the Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate
This branch of the Scottish government focuses on promoting sustainable economic growth in agriculture, the food industry, and in rural areas. Their main focuses are agricultural policy and rural land management, with an aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also support locally-led development in rural communities, including enhancing animal welfare and providing scientific services in Scotland.
Exploring the Migration Pathway
As well-established Jira users, the client was keen to gain a deeper understanding of the implications associated with migrating their instances to the cloud. As the Information Services Division manages many projects within the directorate, the benefits of migrating to cloud in terms of accessibility were clear, including the option for seamless project management available on Atlassian Cloud.
This pre-sales period took around one year, as we worked with the client to decide on our mutual goals within the migration. We migrated three of their applications; Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Confluence. We also offered support for existing admins. Our aim was to migrate to cloud with minimal disruption, which was greatly helped by the contributions of their existing Atlassian admins ensuring the data they required was migrated intact.
Stepping forward with migration
In order to ensure a successful migration, we first entered into a discovery and audit stage with the client, where we worked to anticipate any potential future roadblocks. During this phase, we discovered that user account maintenance was needed prior to the migration being initiated. After reporting this back to the client we worked with them while it was performed. We also reviewed a list of unused spaces and projects, descoping them where possible to ensure a streamlined migration. As with every migration, there were unexpected challenges, we faced one with the migration of user comment data. This was caused by real world complications that arise from having operated the Server product for a long time. Challenges were overcome through collaboration and a one team approach, every team member contributing knowledge and skills from within their domain of expertise – from data analytics and script development, to platform administration and quality assurance testing.
We then migrated Confluence, Jira Software and Jira Service Management respectively. We allowed a month for each production migration after carrying out successful staging migrations for each application, with two weeks dedicated to the migration and then two weeks post migration support. This timeline allowed both the team at New Verve and the client to have a clear plan and set an effective cadence for the migration. This plan alongside an intricate timeline made it clear to the client what they should expect at each stage of the plan, so they could effectively communicate this to users.
Looking towards the future
With the migration being a resounding success, the client now gets to enjoy a multitude of cloud features which are included in the Cloud Premium functionality, such as a sandbox environment. In addition to this, their projects are now all hosted in the same environment between Jira Software and Jira Service Management, making configuration management more cohesive and consistent across all projects.
We would like to thank the client for their hard work and collaboration. If your organisation would like to find out more about the cloud migration services we offer, get in touch. Our cloud migration team is available to answer any questions you may have.
Client: Scottish Government
Technologies: Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Confluence