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Avalara Partners with Isos Technology to Migrate from Data Center to Atlassian Cloud Enterprise
20
offices worldwide
95
countries served
3,300+
employees
Project Snapshot
- Avalara made the decision to move from Atlassian Data Center to Cloud Enterprise to establish governance, increase scalability, and gain enterprise-level support.
- Isos leveraged custom engineering and proprietary solutions, and partnered closely with Atlassian and third-party app vendors to significantly reduce data processing time.
- Avalara now benefits from enhanced governance, which supports efficiency, collaboration, transparency, reporting, and scalability.
Case Study
Avalara is a SaaS company that makes software products and solutions to help businesses of all sizes get tax compliance right. In partnership with leading ERP, accounting, ecommerce, and other financial management system providers, Avalara delivers cloud-based compliance solutions for various transaction taxes, including sales and use, VAT, GST, excise, communications, lodging, and other indirect tax types. Headquartered in Seattle, Avalara has 20 offices across the U.S. and around the world in Brazil, Europe, and India. Its more than 3,300 employees serve customers in 95 countries.
Challenge
As a SaaS company, Avalara is well-versed in the benefits of managing software in the cloud. The organization is also committed to the use of Atlassian tools. Both their engineering and business teams had used Data Center versions of Jira and Confluence to manage projects for some time. However, like many enterprise organizations, Avalara was drawn to Atlassian Cloud Enterprise for its scalability, 99.95% uptime service level agreement, and top-notch support offering.
One of Avalara’s primary reasons for choosing to migrate to Atlassian Cloud was governance. Over time, different work groups within the organization had made use of the tools’ flexibility and customized them, including implementing numerous third-party apps. Avalara saw the migration as an opportunity to standardize processes, consolidate apps, and clean up data, so they could work more efficiently, gain better transparency, streamline collaboration, and simplify reporting. They were also seeking enhanced scalability—with so many customizations, their current solution was not scaling the way they needed it to support business growth and dynamic business needs.
No migration is straightforward, and Avalara’s situation presented some unique challenges. The company had an exceptionally large number of projects and a significant volume of associated data. It was one of the largest migrations both Atlassian and Isos Technology had encountered to date. Adding to the complexity, Avalara had a tight timeline for the overall migration, and as a software company, service level agreements with their own clients meant it was essential that they limit downtime during the actual cutover. Migrating data takes a certain amount of processing time, and Isos Technology had to strategize solutions and test carefully to significantly condense the amount of time typically needed to physically move such large volumes of data.
Solution
The Avalara team, led by Brent Hatfield, Director of Global Infrastructure Technology, had already made the decision to move to the cloud and determined that the best way to support their overall business through the transition was through a phased approach: in Phase 1, the engineering teams would make the transition, and the business teams
would follow in Phase 2. Next, they needed a partner to help them strategize how to get there. After reviewing several vendors, Avalara chose to partner with Isos Technology on the migration due to their deep experience migrating Atlassian tools, as well as their clear communication style.
After a thorough discovery process, the Isos team developed a detailed migration plan and the two groups settled on a timeline that would address Avalara’s need to move quickly and limit downtime, while also minimizing post-migration issues. The migration was a hands-on process that required the use of proprietary tools and custom engineering. Isos rewrote more than 80 complex workflows, then tested and refined them through a highly iterative process, to ensure they would work properly in the new system. Another significant piece of the puzzle included reengineering a critical Salesforce integration, migrating the connection, then reassociating related Jira/Salesforce cases.
Isos also worked closely with Atlassian, identifying opportunities to reduce the time to process data using existing migration tools from as much as 24 hours to as few as six. This was necessary to ensure that the final cutover could be done in a single weekend. Similarly, they worked closely with relevant app vendors to find efficient ways to migrate app data, then tested thoroughly to minimize the risk of issues during the cutover weekend when the vendors would not be available to offer support.
Results
Enhanced visibility: Leadership now has a real-time view of work across all departments, improving transparency and accountability.
Simplified event management: Standardized workflows ensure seamless coordination of resources for campus events.
Streamlined onboarding: New hires benefit from a fully automated process that ensures all necessary tasks are completed before their start date.
Optimized resource tracking: JSM Premium’s asset management capabilities enable efficient tracking and allocation of software, hardware, and other resources.
Improved collaboration: The centralized service portal fosters better communication between departments and reduces reliance on email.
Faster request resolution: Automated workflows and streamlined processes have reduced bottlenecks and improved response times.
From the beginning, it was clear that Isos cared about our success and wanted us to have a tool that would help our teams better manage their work to efficiently and effectively serve our customers.
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