Revolutionizing PayPal: The Largest Atlassian Cloud Migration in History

PayPal, a global leader in online payments, faced significant challenges with their existing infrastructure, which was impacting the developer experience for their more than 35,000 active users. To address these issues, PayPal embarked on an Atlassian Cloud transformation, seeking to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve scalability. The outdated infrastructure resulted in high maintenance costs, manual processes, and limited ability to scale to meet growing demands. Recognizing the complexity and scale of this transformation, PayPal partnered with Cprime, Atlassian’s trusted partner, to facilitate the largest Atlassian Cloud migration in history.

The collaboration between PayPal, Atlassian, and Cprime was pivotal in ensuring the success of this ambitious project. Through meticulous planning, extensive workflow transformation and scripting, and continuous configuration improvements, the team was able to transform PayPal’s Atlassian infrastructure, providing a more flexible and automated environment that significantly enhanced the developer experience. 

Can You Relate to PayPal’s Infrastructure and Efficiency Challenges?

PayPal’s huge engineering department was facing several critical challenges that necessitated this Atlassian Cloud transformation. See if any of these issues sound familiar to you:

Developer Experience:

The existing infrastructure was not supportive of the transformation needed to improve the developer experience. With over 35,000 active users, PayPal required a more robust and user-friendly environment to enhance productivity and satisfaction. Developers reported frustration with slow performance, limited access to new features, and a complex user interface.

Cost and Efficiency:

PayPal was dealing with a high total cost of ownership due to outdated infrastructure and inefficient processes. There was a pressing need to achieve infrastructure savings and reduce administrator support costs to streamline operations and make them state-of-the-art. Manual processes and extensive maintenance requirements contributed to increased costs and decreased efficiency.

Scalability and Flexibility:

The existing setup lacked the scalability and flexibility required to support PayPal’s large user base and complex projects. A more scalable solution was essential to meet the growing demands and ensure seamless operations. The legacy infrastructure struggled to accommodate spikes in usage and limited PayPal’s ability to quickly adapt to changing business needs.

These challenges prompted PayPal to seek a comprehensive solution that could address their needs and provide a more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure—and all at an unprecedented scale.

Cprime’s Strategic Approach to the Largest Cloud Transformation in Atlassian’s History

To address PayPal’s challenges, Cprime facilitated a comprehensive migration to Atlassian Cloud, leveraging their expertise and close collaboration with Atlassian and PayPal. The solution involved several key components:

Assessment and Planning:

Cprime conducted a thorough assessment to understand PayPal’s specific needs and challenges. This assessment laid the groundwork for a phased migration approach, ensuring minimal disruption to PayPal’s operations. This included analyzing the current infrastructure, identifying key pain points, and gathering input from stakeholders across the organization.

Cprime developed a detailed project plan, outlining the migration timeline, resource allocation, and risk mitigation strategies.The migration was meticulously planned and executed, emphasizing the scale and complexity of the largest Atlassian Cloud migration ever undertaken.

Workflow Transformation and Custom Scripting:

Like most enterprise organizations, PayPal had invested significant time and effort customizing their workflows to support their business needs. . An initial analysis indicated that PayPal’s existing workflows would need significant transformation to work in the new cloud environment. Cprime worked closely with PayPal to document the needed transformations, script solutions, and develop a plan for the migration and post migration support period. Through extensive planning, development and validation during the test migration phase, Cprime worked to ensure the successful delivery of PayPal’s mission critical workflows on Day 1. After the cutover, the Cprime team continued to remediate the remaining workflows as prioritized by PayPal, ensuring that users were able to execute their work as needed. 

Collaboration and Partnership:

The success of the migration was underpinned by the ongoing partnership between Atlassian, PayPal, and Cprime. This collaboration allowed for continuous improvements and customization of the migration experience to better meet PayPal’s needs. Regular status meetings, transparent communication, and a shared commitment to success were key factors in the effective collaboration.

For example, significant changes were made to the Confluence migration experience, ensuring it was a better fit for PayPal and their users. The tight partnership enabled the team to address challenges promptly and implement necessary improvements.

PayPal is Thrilled With These Quantifiable Gains and Enhanced Developer Experience

The Atlassian Cloud transformation yielded several significant outcomes for PayPal, demonstrating the effectiveness of the solutions implemented by Cprime:

Improved Developer Experience:

The migration significantly enhanced the developer experience for PayPal’s 35,000 active users. The new cloud environment provided more flexibility and access to automation, which were previously unavailable.

Quantitative Achievements:

• User Data: User records, configuration, historical data, and workflows for over 80,000 past and present users.
• Jira: Over 3,000 projects and close to 3.5 million issues were successfully migrated to the cloud.
• Confluence: Over 13,000 spaces and over 14 million pages were moved—over the course of just one weekend—ensuring that all critical data and documentation were preserved and accessible.
• Workflow Remediation: Approximately 1,200 individually scripted add-on and customization transformation items including Scriptrunner, JSU, and Jira Automation

These numbers highlight the scale of the migration and the meticulous planning and execution that went into managing such a large volume of data.

Efficiency and Flexibility:

The new cloud environment offers much more flexibility and automation capabilities, allowing PayPal to prioritize critical projects and manage their large data sets more effectively.  Automated workflows and real-time reporting features enabled faster decision-making and improved resource allocation.

The cloud setup enabled PayPal to leverage new features and tools, enhancing overall productivity and operational efficiency. PayPal teams were able to adopt agile practices more easily, leading to faster time-to-market for new products and features.

Positive Feedback and Continuous Improvement:

The structured approach to prioritizing and managing the migration helped dissipate any doubts about the suitability of the cloud for PayPal. The process was a journey with continuous improvements, ultimately leading to a successful migration. 

The tight partnership between Atlassian, PayPal, and Cprime allowed for significant changes to the Confluence migration experience, making it a better fit for PayPal’s needs. This collaborative approach ensured that the migration was not a one-time event but an ongoing process of optimization and refinement.

The successful migration to Atlassian Cloud not only addressed PayPal’s initial challenges but also provided a more robust, flexible, and efficient infrastructure, setting the stage for future growth and innovation.

A New Era for PayPal: The Lasting Impact of Atlassian Cloud Transformation

By addressing critical challenges related to developer experience, cost efficiency, and scalability, Cprime, Atlassian and PayPal were able to collaboratively transform PayPal’s infrastructure, providing a more flexible and automated environment that significantly enhanced operational efficiency.

As organizations look to optimize their technology stack and enhance operational efficiency, the PayPal case study serves as a compelling example of the transformative potential of Atlassian Cloud migration. Cprime’s proven methodology and commitment to delivering tailored solutions make them the ideal partner for any organization seeking to embark on a similar journey.

Can you see yourself in PayPal’s story? Are you considering a move from On-Prem instances to Atlassian Cloud? If so, you should do one of two things right now: 

For more information on how Cprime can help your organization achieve similar success, please contact us to explore our comprehensive Atlassian Cloud transformation services.

Or, to get started now, speak to a migration specialist about scheduling a Cloud Migration Impact Assessment.