Jira Data Center Ends in 2029: What Teams in Kazakhstan Should Do

Atlassian is steadily winding down the self-hosted versions of its products. Jira Server was shut down in February 2024. Data Center, the last version of Jira you can install on your own server, passed the point of no return in March 2026: new licenses are no longer sold. Companies in Kazakhstan that chose Data Center for control over their data have a little over two years left to decide.

This article is for heads of IT and product teams who currently work in Jira Server or Data Center and need to choose where to move. We go through the official timeline, Kazakhstan-specific data storage considerations and three working scenarios with their costs and risks.

Atlassian’s timeline: three dates you need to know

Date	What happens	What it means for you
February 15, 2024	End of support for Jira Server	If you are still on Server, you have gone two years without security updates
March 30, 2026	End of sale for Data Center	You cannot buy a new license or add a product to your environment
March 30, 2028	Last renewals and expansions for existing customers	After this date, you cannot increase the user count or renew your subscription
March 28, 2029	End of support for Data Center	The license switches to read-only mode, and Marketplace apps stop working

The March 28, 2029 date is confirmed on Atlassian’s official page. The interim 2028 date is cited by Atlassian partners, and you should check it with your licensing manager: terms may differ for large contracts.

The practical takeaway: you need to decide not by 2029 but by 2027. Migrating a team of 50–100 people takes a quarter, and next year’s budget is drawn up in the fall.

Why “just moving to Jira Cloud” is harder than it seems in Kazakhstan

Atlassian offers Data Center customers one official path: migration to Atlassian Cloud. For teams in the US and Europe, this is a workable scenario. For Kazakhstan, there are three complications.

Data is stored outside the country

The data residency feature in Atlassian Cloud lets you pin data to a specific region. The available ones are the US, EU, Germany, the UK, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, Japan, India, South Korea and Canada. Kazakhstan is not on the list and, judging by the geography of AWS data centers, will not appear in the coming years.

Kazakhstan context. A task tracker contains employee data and often customer data: names, emails, conversations in comments, attachments. Some customers ask for such data to be stored in the country. If this matters to your company, settle the question before signing a contract with a cloud vendor.

Many Kazakhstan companies, especially in finance, telecom and the public sector, chose Data Center for exactly this reason. For them, moving to Cloud means not a change of interface but taking data out of the country.

Costs grow with the team

Data Center was sold in user-count tiers. Cloud is billed per user per month. According to Atlassian’s price list as of October 2026, Jira Standard costs $7.91 and Premium $14.54 per user per month with annual billing. On top of that, you usually add Confluence ($5.42), Atlassian Guard for SSO and auditing ($4.20) and paid Marketplace apps. According to Plane, one of Atlassian’s competitors, the total cost of ownership rises by an average of 28% when moving to Cloud. The figure comes from a vendor, but the order of magnitude matches what we see when recalculating costs with clients.

Not everything migrates

ScriptRunner scripts, Groovy automations, custom permission schemes and some Marketplace apps have no direct equivalents in Cloud. Atlassian offers a migration tool, but the business logic accumulated over the years will have to be rewritten anyway. It is the same amount of work as moving to a different product, just without the choice.

Three scenarios for companies in Kazakhstan

Scenario	Who it suits	Main risk	Cost range
Jira Cloud	Teams for whom data location does not matter and that are deeply tied to Atlassian	Data outside Kazakhstan, a growing bill	$8 to $15 per user per month plus Confluence and Guard
Self-hosted alternative	Companies for whom storing data in Kazakhstan matters, with a limited budget	You need an owner for infrastructure and updates	Licenses from zero, plus server and support
Hybrid	Large holding companies whose divisions have different requirements	Two systems, two processes, double integration	The sum of the first two, with a heavier load on IT

Scenario 1. Jira Cloud after a data review

This works if the tracker contains no data the company wants to keep in Kazakhstan, or if you are willing to anonymize it. Example: a product team tracks only technical tasks, while customer data lives in a CRM on Kazakhstan servers. In that case, moving to Cloud with Atlassian’s tools takes 4–8 weeks, and the team keeps the familiar interface.

Before deciding, calculate the full bill three years ahead with team growth, including Confluence, Guard and apps. It is often this number that shifts the conversation to scenario 2.

Scenario 2. A self-hosted alternative

In 2026, there are mature self-hosted tracker options. We most often compare four.

Tool	License	Strength	Limitation
Plane	AGPL, free Community edition, paid Commercial and Airgapped	Closest to Jira in how it works, built-in wiki, import from Jira Cloud and Server/DC, AI agents	Its integration ecosystem is younger than Atlassian’s
OpenProject	GPL, paid Enterprise features	Gantt charts, budgets, project portfolio management	The model is geared to classic project management, not product teams
YouTrack	Proprietary, free for up to 10 users	Integration with JetBrains IDEs, fast search	Closed source, per-user pricing as you grow
Redmine	GPL	Time-tested, many plugins	Dated interface, development has slowed

For product and IT teams, we recommend starting the evaluation with Plane. It is the only one on this list with a built-in importer from Jira Server and Data Center that moves projects, tasks, comments, attachments, links and users. We covered a detailed migration plan in a separate article on migrating from Jira to Plane.

A self-hosted deployment keeps data in Kazakhstan: Plane is installed via Docker or Kubernetes on a server at a Kazakhstan hosting provider or in your own data center. The free Community edition does not limit the number of users. Paid versions add SSO, granular access permissions and vendor support.

The price of this scenario: responsibility for the server, backups and updates falls on you or a contractor. For a company without a DevOps engineer, this is the main argument against, and it needs to be addressed before the start, not after.

Scenario 3. Hybrid

Holding companies with a dozen different divisions sometimes keep Jira Cloud for some teams and deploy a self-hosted system for divisions where storing data in Kazakhstan matters. This setup works, but at double the cost: two processes, two integrations with CRM and HR, two sets of reports. We advise treating a hybrid as a one-year transition stage, not as the target state.

What to check before making a decision

The checklist we start our client audits with:

1. Number of active users in the last 90 days. Data Center licenses are often bought with headroom, and the actual team is smaller. The budget for any scenario depends on this number.
2. Project inventory. How many projects are active, how many are closed, how many can be archived. A good migration does not move everything.
3. Custom logic. ScriptRunner, Groovy, custom post functions and permission schemes. This is the most expensive layer in any migration.
4. Marketplace apps. Which ones are actually used and which were installed “just in case.”
5. Integrations. Git repositories, CI/CD, CRM, Slack or Telegram, the HR system. Each will have to be reconnected.
6. Data in the tracker. Whether there is customer personal data, contracts or financial documents in attachments. This answers the question of where data must be stored.
7. Infrastructure owner. Who will be responsible for the server in the self-hosted scenario: an in-house engineer, a contractor or a hosting provider with a managed service.

A 12-month plan

Period	Action	Outcome
Month 1	Jira audit, decision on data location, cost estimates for the three scenarios	A decision on the target system with a budget
Months 2–3	Pilot with one team of 10–20 people	A tested model of projects and statuses
Months 4–6	Migration waves for the remaining teams, reconnecting integrations	All teams in the new system, Jira in read-only mode
Months 7–9	Stabilization, executive dashboards, process documentation	A process owner within the company
Months 10–12	Decommissioning Data Center, export archive	The Atlassian contract closed before the renewal date

This plan leaves a year of margin before the 2028 deadline and lets you avoid renewing Data Center for another cycle.

Our take on the choice

If your team does not care where data is stored and makes deep use of the Atlassian ecosystem, moving to Jira Cloud remains the most predictable path. For most companies in Kazakhstan that want to keep data in the country or are growing fast, a self-hosted system on their own servers solves two problems at once: data storage and budget. The key condition for success in this scenario is not the tool but an assigned owner of the process and the infrastructure.

We help you go through the whole journey: from a Jira audit to deploying Plane on servers in Kazakhstan and training the team. Learn more about our Jira and Plane task tracker implementation service.

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Sources and dates. Data Center timeline: Atlassian’s official page. Data residency regions: Atlassian documentation. Jira Cloud pricing: Atlassian price list, October 2026, annual billing. Estimate of the increase in total cost of ownership when moving to Cloud: Plane’s open letter to Jira Data Center customers, September 2025.

Terms in plain words

Jira Data Center

The version of Jira that a company installs on its own servers and maintains itself. New licenses have not been sold since March 2026, and support ends in March 2029.

Self-hosted

The software runs on the company's server or a chosen hosting provider's, not in the developer's cloud. This way, tracker data can be kept in Kazakhstan.

Data residency

An Atlassian Cloud feature that pins data storage to a chosen region. Kazakhstan is not among the available regions.

Marketplace apps

Third-party add-ons for Jira. After Data Center support ends, they stop working, so they and their data need to be accounted for in advance when migrating.

ScriptRunner

A Jira add-on used to write custom automation scripts in Groovy. This logic does not migrate automatically to the cloud or to another tracker.

SSO (Single Sign-On)

A single login: an employee signs in to all work systems with one corporate account. It simplifies granting and revoking access.

AGPL

The open-source license of Plane's free version: you can install and use the system without paying per user. If a company modifies the code and provides access to the system over a network, the modified code must be released.

Airgapped

An installation in a network completely disconnected from the internet. Banks and the public sector need it; Plane has a separate paid version for this.