Success Story: Migrating from Jira Data Center to Atlassian Cloud in One of the Largest Energy Companies

Operational Continuity, Governance, and User Experience at the Core

To accelerate innovation and reduce infrastructure complexity, one of the largest companies in the energy sector decided to migrate its Jira Data Center environment to Atlassian Cloud, covering Jira Software and Jira Service Management (JSM). The project, led by Nimble Evolution’s specialized migration team, required ensuring uninterrupted critical services, preserving integrations, and quickly enabling new features for IT and business teams.

The Challenge

Tight deadline and critical operations: a short execution window with no margin for major service disruptions.
Broad and complex scope: hundreds of thousands of issues, multiple projects, and diverse audiences with distinct needs.
Temporary coexistence of environments: Data Center and Cloud running in parallel during the transition.
Sensitive external integrations: maintaining compatibility and continuity throughout the migration.
Global organizational dependencies: coordination across both global and local teams.

The Solution

“AS IS” continuity approach: preserving behaviors, integrations, and essential functionalities to minimize disruption in the user experience.
Phased execution by waves: migration planned in stages to reduce risk and allow incremental validations.
Centralized governance and security: alignment with the global team to manage access, permissions, and auditing.

Implementation Strategy & Process

Readiness & Detailed Planning
- Inventory of projects, automations, integrations, and dependencies.
Pre-validation in Sandbox
- Integrity, performance, and compatibility testing for integrations.
Phased Migration and Wave Testing
- Prioritization based on criticality and impacted user groups.
Cutover with Assisted Operations (Hypercare)
- Dedicated support and fine-tuning post–go-live.
Adoption and Continuous Optimization
- General training, deep-dive tracks, and best-practice workshops.

Risk Analysis & Mitigation

Dependence on global team (Org Admin): shared governance and coordinated execution windows.
External integrations: end-to-end sandbox testing and component-based rollback plans.
Heterogeneous user groups / large volumes: segmented communication, staged simulations, and dedicated support channels.
DC + Cloud coexistence: clear cutover criteria, controlled freeze periods, and close monitoring.

Communication Plan

“The right people, at the right time, through the right channel.”

Stage-based communication (before/during/after) with clear language and objective instructions.
Support materials (FAQs, quick guides, timelines, and expected impacts).
Measurement of understanding/adoption and targeted reinforcements for critical groups.

Results Achieved

Smooth go-live across all waves, ensuring business continuity with no critical service interruptions.
User experience preserved and enhanced with improved performance and native Cloud features.
Strengthened governance with standardized access, permissions, and auditing.
Foundation for evolution: a structured service desk (JSM) with SLAs, queues, and resolver groups; best-practice playbooks for internal teams.
More than just a migration: an operational transformation enabling continuous improvements and expanded adoption across teams.

Next Steps

Further optimization of processes and native automations.
Adoption of AI-powered features to boost productivity.
Continuous improvement of Atlassian tool usage by leveraging new Cloud-native capabilities.

Conclusion

This case demonstrates how structured planning, disciplined execution, effective communication, and a focus on user experience transformed a complex migration into a modernization milestone for a leading energy company — with tangible results from day one in Atlassian Cloud.