Atlassian Summit 2013: What we learned
So the dust has settled, the jetlag is just a memory and we're back to shuttling between client sites and Adaptavist offices. Atlassian Summit 2013 was definitely the biggest and best yet with more delegates, more partners and more new products than ever. Here's some of our highlights from this year's event.
Enterprise, enterprise, enterprise
Lots of people we spoke to were looking for help with Atlassian tools in an Enterprise context and there were definitely more decision-makers present this year. There were lots of questions at our booth about how to scale for a larger user base, estate management, performance tuning for large JIRA instances and so on.
We also saw more support for behind-the-firewall with the announcement of HipChat Onsite join the beta programme here which promises remotely hosted plugins and easier integration with other systems.
HipChat is go
Not only is HipChat to be available in a behind-the-firewall version but it adds voice and video communication. That could make it a Skype-killer in a lot of situations. It also gives Atlassian an exciting new opportunity through the ability to integrate HipChat with VOIP phone systems. Makes life simpler for project teams too with the opportunity to do some rationalisation of their comms clients.
The plugin market continues to grow
The quantity and quality of offerings, especially around JIRA, was impressive. Players like Tempo are definitely starting to make JIRA + plugins deliver a valuable project management tool.
More integration of more of the tools
We think this is a major initiative, focus and opportunity. On a basic level it will make centralised administration of the Atlassian estate more straightforward. However, it will also make information sharing between different elements of the application lifecycle better. First up will be further integration between Confluence and JIRA giving teams between links between project information and knowledge.
Moving beyond software development
JIRA Service Desk was one of the big product launches and it represents one of Atlassian's first moves to apply JIRA to general business processes rather than the software development process. This might be more of a long game, but we think it'll be a major focus.
We also learned that the Press Club is a fantastic venue and the perfect place to host a pre-Summit soiree. Roll on Summit 2014.
Adaptavist Enterprise Party @ Atlassian Summit 2013 by Slidely
