Enabling hybrid
customers
across the
Atlassian suite
DISCIPLINE
Product Design · UX Research · Systems Thinking
TEAM
Lead Designer · Cross-functional team
METHODOLOGY
Research-led, iterative
YEAR
2023
● CONTEXT
Connect enterprise teams across every deployment
—
without forcing them to choose.
By 2023, Atlassian Cloud could support the entire product development lifecycle. Enterprise customers weren't using it that way. They were running Jira Data Centre for engineering, layering in competitor tools — GitHub, Aha!, Asana, Smartsheet - where Atlassian's cloud offering didn't yet reach, and not making the connection between the tools they were paying for and the tools they actually needed.
Two risks were compounding quietly. Customers who stayed comfortable in Data Centre weren't experiencing what Atlassian Cloud could do - and without that experience, there was no reason to migrate. At the same time, every non-Atlassian tool that entered the stack was a retention risk. Teams that built workflows around competitor products didn't need Atlassian to make the case for Cloud. They'd already made a different decision.
The project had two goals: accelerate cloud adoption, and prevent churn. Not by pushing customers toward Cloud, but by connecting Data Centre and Cloud so seamlessly that the value became self-evident.
Integration as proof - not migration pressure.
● IMPACT SNAPSHOT
Three signals that defined the brief — before a wireframe was drawn.
60%
of enterprise customers rated cross-instance collaboration a top investment priority - ranked among the highest of 15 areas surveyed
(EES, n=102 Cloud Enterprise customers)
25%-30%
of Jira Cloud users are non-technical business roles - the segment most likely to abandon the platform when hybrid friction makes it unworkable
3yrs
of existing Atlassian research reframed - from infrastructure connectivity to human workflow, establishing The Process Creator as a primary underserved archetype
"Your products work better together than they do by themselves - and that's what we're sold and that's what people use. But it means that you can't just start thinking in isolation, because there is just so much integration between all of this."
Enterprise Customer, Teleport Research
Hybrid setup landscape
To understand the opportunity, we first needed to map the landscape. What tools are being used at each stage of the development process — from discovery and planning through to build, release, and operations? And critically: does Atlassian Cloud already offer a product that does the same job?
The answer, almost everywhere, was yes. The problem wasn't a gap in Atlassian's product portfolio. It was that customers weren't making the connection between the tools they were already paying for and the tools they were using instead.
Caption: Mapping the full product development lifecycle against the tools enterprise customers actually use — and identifying where Atlassian Cloud already has a replacement, and where it doesn't.
● LET'S WORK TOGETHER
Got a project?
Let's talk.
andpon - Andrzej Poniatowski
© 2026