Atlassian Data Center vs. AGC vs. Isolated Cloud

For years, Atlassian Data Center was the answer for any organization that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, put its Jira and Confluence workloads on shared infrastructure. Banks, defense contractors, healthcare providers, and public agencies ran their own clusters, kept their data behind their own firewalls, and controlled every layer of the stack themselves.

That era is closing. Atlassian has set a firm end-of-life date for its Data Center products, and the company is steering every customer toward the cloud. But “the cloud” is no longer the only destination. Atlassian now offers three distinct cloud deployment models: Commercial (Standard) Cloud, Government Cloud, and Isolated Cloud. each built for a different risk tolerance and regulatory profile.

That turns a familiar question into a more nuanced one. It’s no longer “cloud or on-prem?” It’s “which cloud model matches my compliance obligations, my data-residency requirements, and the level of isolation my auditors will actually approve?”

Overview of Data Center, AIC, and AGC

Before comparing them, it helps to understand what each model fundamentally is, because they are not three points on a single upgrade path. They are different architectures built for different problems.

1. Atlassian Data Center

Data Center is the self-managed, on-premises model. You deploy and operate the software yourself, either in your own data center or on infrastructure you control at an IaaS provider like AWS or Azure. You own the infrastructure decisions, the data location, the high-availability clustering, and all the operational responsibility that comes with it. It has always been the go-to option for organizations demanding full control over their environment.

However, the situation of Data Center today is that it is being retired. Atlassian has announced end-of-life for its impacted Data Center products, including Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, Bamboo, Crowd, and their associated Marketplace apps, on March 28, 2029, when licenses expire and instances become read-only.

Bitbucket Data Center is the only exception and continues under a separate hybrid license model. Everything below about the cloud models exists, in part, because Data Center customers now need a migration target.

2. Atlassian Government Cloud (AGC)

AGC is the model built specifically for the U.S. public sector. It carries FedRAMP Moderate authorization for Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management and guarantees U.S. data residency.

For federal agencies and the organizations that serve them, Atlassian Government Cloud often determines whether cloud adoption is possible at all; it exists to clear a specific compliance bar. Atlassian has also signaled its intent to pursue higher certifications, including FedRAMP High and U.S. Department of Defense Impact Level 5 (IL5), over time.

3. Atlassian Isolated Cloud (AIC)

AIC is the newest model, having reached general availability in mid-2026. It is a single-tenant deployment: instead of sharing infrastructure with other customers, you get dedicated compute, storage, and networking inside a virtual private cloud, with your data kept fully separate from anyone else’s.

Besides, it’s designed for large, security-first enterprises that want to modernize to the cloud but cannot accept a multi-tenant environment. Its reach is broader than AGC, targeting private-sector enterprises, defense contractors, international agencies, and any organization with strict segregation or global-compliance requirements.

Data Center vs. AIC vs. AGC: Technical breakdown

The three models diverge most clearly across a handful of technical dimensions: tenancy, network and egress control, encryption, compliance posture, data residency, and app compatibility.

Which model to choose for your organization

Because these models solve different problems, the choice is less about picking the “most secure” option and more about matching a model to your actual constraints.

• Stay on Data Center only if you can’t yet fit any cloud model and you’re using the remaining runway deliberately. It remains operable until end of life, but it’s a migration origin now, not a long-term destination. Treating it as “do nothing” is the one genuinely risky option, because the timeline is fixed.

• Choose Government Cloud (AGC) if you’re a U.S. federal agency, a public-sector body, or a contractor whose ability to adopt cloud hinges on FedRAMP authorization and U.S. data residency. If a compliance checkbox is what stands between you and the cloud, AGC is purpose-built to check it.

• Choose Isolated Cloud (AIC) if you’re a large enterprise in a regulated or IP-sensitive industry, like banking, healthcare, critical infrastructure, defense, or automotive R&D, whose auditors require dedicated infrastructure and strict control over egress, encryption, and support access. AIC is the model for organizations leaving Data Center but genuinely cannot operate in a shared environment. It’s typically aimed at larger deployments, so it fits organizations at meaningful scale.

One caution worth mentioning: technical isolation is not the same as legal sovereignty. Because Atlassian is a U.S. based company, it can be subject to U.S. legal instruments such as the CLOUD Act even when data is hosted in another region.

If your requirement is jurisdictional data sovereignty rather than technical separation, none of these models fully resolves that on its own. That’s a legal question to work through with your compliance team, not just an architecture choice.

Migrate confidently alongside DevSamurai

Whichever model you land on, the hardest part of the journey is rarely the destination but rather the migration itself, and particularly what happens to the apps and workflows your teams depend on every day.

Understanding that, DevSamurai isn’t just building for standard Commercial Cloud. Our team is actively developing our solutions to be applicable to Atlassian Isolated Cloud.

Specifically:

• ProductGo: a product management and roadmapping app for Jira that helps teams build user story maps, define personas, and lay out release roadmaps to align planning with delivery.
• GanttTable: a project planning and scheduling app that brings interactive Gantt charts into Jira, letting teams visualize timelines, map dependencies, and track progress across projects.

And the list goes on for the rest of our solutions. The apps your teams depend on today are being prepared to work within the stricter compliance and isolation boundaries those models impose.

For organizations heading toward AGC or AIC, that means less risk of arriving in a hardened environment only to find a key tool unsupported. It’s a signal that your app stack can move with you rather than becoming a casualty of the migration.

Conclusion

Atlassian Data Center’s end of life has turned a simple hosting decision into a genuine strategic choice. The three cloud models each answer a different need: Commercial Cloud offers simplicity, speed, and the latest features for the majority of teams. Meanwhile, Government Cloud clears the FedRAMP and U.S. residency bar for the public sector, and Isolated Cloud delivers dedicated infrastructure, egress control, and a hardened posture that security-first enterprises require.

The right choice isn’t the one that sounds most secure. It’s the one that matches your real regulatory obligations, your data residency requirements, and the level of isolation your auditors will actually sign off on. And because the Data Center deadline is fixed, the costliest decision is to defer.