This article was written by Marta Ogonovska, an Operations manager at iDalko.
5 Things You Should Know When Tackling Your Atlassian Licenses
It is time to ask yourself frankly: “Do I really know what is concealed under the simple phrase ‘Atlassian Licensing Management’?”. In case the answer is “Yes, I’m an Atlassian licensing guru”, then we would not be offended if you spent 15 minutes reading your favorite book of effective anti-COVID measures instead of reading this article.
But for the rest of you, we’ll try our best to guide you through some crucial aspects of Atlassian Licensing. This will not be a step-by-step guide, since you already have one in the Atlassian official documentation. But we will try to put some parts of the puzzle together to help you see not the separate blades of grass, but the whole blooming field.
Use the trial license to your advantage
One of the most brilliant ideas our partners in Atlassian came up with is that you can get an Evaluation license. A good old trial. “Why is that so brilliant?” you may ask. Many products have trials. Yes, but no.
The Atlassian trial has a few significant advantages. First of all, when you apply an Evaluation license to a product, it gives you exactly the same product as you would get with a Commercial one. Your product is not limited in functionality, you get exactly the same version as the commercial one.
How do you distinguish if from a paid license then? It is easy since the license SEN number of a trial license has a letter in it, for example, SEN-L12345678. In the meanwhile, the same license SEN for a commercial license would be SEN-12345668. You have 30 (in some cases up to 90) days to fully dive into the product and make a decision if this is really what you needed (I bet it is).
Another advantage of the evaluation license is that all installed trials include access to the Atlassian technical support resources. So you will never be kicked out of the “we-bought-it-for-money-therefore-we-get-support” party.
The last but not the least feature of the Atlassian trial is that you do not have to reinstall the software after buying a commercial license. Copy-paste the purchased license key into the Versions & Licenses page of your product’s administration console and Voila! You’ve got a Commercial license.
Get those dates in line with co-termination
Another great invention of all times (okay, let’s say, of the Licensing times) is a Co-Termination. Here is a little riddle: the Top Manager of an IT Department, the Head of Purchasing, an Atlassian Engineer, and a Technical Support Agent, what do they have in common?
Besides the salary, cozy office, and high risk of vision problems. I bet if you check their calendars you will see a wide range of dates marked with red here and there – some dates will match, some will be scattered through the whole year. Those will be the days to remember, the days when their main Atlassian applications and partner’s add-ons licenses expire.
Companies are constantly growing, expanding their infrastructure by new add-ons, upgrading applications to higher user tiers. And most of those licenses get 1 year of Maintenance which is not aligned with the end date of their “Supreme” Jira license. Even being David Copperfield will not give you the power to align all those chaotic dates to fit in one single day. But being a well-informed Atlassian customer will. And that is what Co-Termination is about.
Co-terming licenses allow you to align all of the expiration dates with one renewal date. Imagine it is your best friend’s birthday, or their anniversary, or the day you’ve bought your first secret Valentine’s present. Yes, it is much easier to remember only one single renewal date for all your Atlassian products! No pressure, easy budget planning, and reduction of the procurement cycles are a few presents you get at this special Co-Termination party.
Spread knowledge, save money
Okay, we’ve covered some tips on how to get acquainted with the Atlassian products and how to manage your Commercial license renewals easily. What if we assume that there are people who need the Atlassian products not for the businesses that are the Atlassian common customers? We are talking not about contemporary artists that might want to use Jira for their art performances.
We are talking about the ones that want to use the platforms to spread knowledge. We are talking about schools, institutes, public libraries, teaching hospitals, and other Academic institutions. If you are a member of such an institution and need Atlassian products, we have great news for you.
There is a special type of Atlassian license called Academic. Purchasing this type of license is as simple as purchasing any other licenses. However, it allows you to save 50% of the item price. The only difference is that Atlassian may require proof of accreditation or affiliation before providing the Academic license.
As a result, all students, teachers, potential doctors, and lecturers have a chance to use one of the best application sets of our times on their learning platforms. Wouldn’t you want to be treated by the doctor who has access to the best learning resources? We certainly would!
Know where the discounts are
The next licensing part we want to cover is probably well known. But as we can say from our own experience, sometimes it is being dramatically omitted by customers. We can not let this happen, that is why “Le secret de Polichinelle” is being shared with you today. Ready?
There are discounts for licenses when you move from Server to Data Center, as well as from Server/Data Center to Cloud. So if you have a Server version of the Atlassian products and consider migrating your infrastructure to DataCenter or Cloud, this is your finest hour! If your existing Single Server license is still under active maintenance, you’ll be able to upgrade to Data Center at a discount. Also, for a limited time existing Server and Data Center customers who are moving to a 1,001+ user cloud license are eligible for a loyalty discount when migrating Jira Software, Jira Service Desk, Jira Core, and/or Confluence.
When we talk about discounts it would be unfair to omit the reductions customers get in case they purchase licenses via Atlassian Partners. The sun rises from East and if you buy a license via an Atlassian Partner, you get a nice discount. The only exception is when you switch your ongoing licenses from one Atlassian Partner to another. In this case, reductions will apply from the second year.
Here is our recommendation, visit Atlassian Licensing documentation, check the conditions, and we guarantee that you will be pleasantly surprised by the amount of offered discount.
Take good care of your technical contact
The last part will be dedicated to a person in every company who is the license wise guy. You may call him/her the License Guru, the King of SEN, the Supreme Licensist, and even The-One-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Do you have an idea who we are talking about?
Yes, the Technical Contact. The owner of the email address you fill into the corresponding tab. The one who gets all the emails about the activation of your license keys and who submits tickets on my.atlassian.com in case of technical issues. Each Atlassian license can be associated with an unlimited number of Technical contacts. But there should always be a ‘main’ Technical contact.
Always make sure the email (and phone number) listed as a technical contact is reachable and owned by an active member of your team. It should not be mixed up with Billing Contact, an email to be contacted regarding payment of licenses and invoice. If your company is not big, it is perfectly OK to have one person listed as both. But if you are growing fast, we suggest dividing those roles. We believe that paying attention to this detail allows you to avoid the efforts of adjusting this in the future.
That was the information we wanted to share with you today. We did our best to collect the 5 most common and useful licensing tips for your company. And we do hope that even if we didn’t manage to show you the whole painting of Mona Lisa, you still were able to take a glance at the smile on her face.