TEAM - AI Commentary from Atlassian Partners
Atlassian announced its initial foray into AI at Team ’23 (late April) through the introduction of Atlassian Intelligence. Most partners who attended expressed excitement about the potential of incorporating AI into the Atlassian portfolio. “We’re chomping at the bit — we can’t wait to sell Atlassian Intelligence. It was previewed at Team ’23 and available as early-access preview. It brings AI to Analytics and … Confluence. It provides the ability to summarize your meetings page, summarize history of a Jira issue, write acceptance criteria and create tasks based on that criterion, etc. AI will be valuable to collaborative teams of developers in innumerable ways,” a North American partner said. Another said, “Atlassian is incorporating AI into their products with a behind-the-firewall mentality — how [to] get an AI agent to look at your company’s systems and records and give you an answer based on your company, not just from the internet.” Another said, “Currently, early access for Atlassian Intelligence is limited. For most people, the AI-powered virtual agent is available, but not the full intelligence suite. Capabilities are also somewhat limited, but more AI features are expected to be added [later]. Currently, AI-powered intention creation hasn’t been implemented — those need to be built manually.”
Developer Impact
Overall, Atlassian partners do not foresee AI reducing the need for software developers, but some believe it could change the skill profile of developers in the future. “The potential incorporation of AI into Atlassian products could be a game changer. The point of AI in Jira isn’t necessarily to do the work for the employee, but to help them work better together — and AI has massive implications in that space. We’re talking about an exponential enhancement to the productivity of engineers,” a North American partner said. Another said, “Some of the younger developers may use language models to assist in coding. However, our more experienced developers find it faster and easier to just write the code themselves. I can’t envision a scenario where the world will require fewer developers in the near future.” Another said, “Long term, who knows. But for the foreseeable future AI is going to allow companies to get more value out of their developers and elevate their agile systems.” An EMEA partner said, “We need the same amount [from] developers, just the specialization will be different. It will lean more towards software-engineering developers and away from simple code writers.” Another said, “It will change the way we see developers in the future. Plain coding will be monitored by AI, and maybe it will set new developer profiles. I think those are topics for the future.”
Potential Cloud Driver
Two EMEA partners said Atlassian’s AI product initiatives are intended to be confined to the cloud, which could encourage more customers to adopt the cloud. “AI is on everyone’s lips. Our customers aren’t on the starting blocks yet, and many can’t imagine what the use cases should be [for AI]. The use cases must become clearer for the customers. The [Team ’23 keynote] presentation generated a lot of interest. AI will only be available in the cloud — that will certainly bring customers to the cloud. The bottom line is good stuff, but a bit early,” one said. The other said, “Atlassian’s AI-driven features enhance automated workflows among Jira and Confluence, but only for cloud. [OpenAI Inc.’s] ChatGPT has driven the topic and all software vendors are willing to invest here. I need to go a bit deeper into that to make up my mind, but it’s interesting.”
Other Quotes
“Atlassian Intelligence looks interesting. But, like everyone, we’re trying to figure it out. It’s still early stage, but Atlassian has the capacity to release something very powerful. There’s so much data in Jira, Confluence, Align, etc. — there’s a lot we can do.” Global
“I think Atlassian Intelligence is a great start, and, if it works even half as well as what they’ve shown, that would be great. But I’m a bit skeptical. Atlassian has a ton of potential to include AI, especially in the service-desk world. However, even though the technology is valuable and can help [to] eliminate cost, people still want to speak to somebody in IT. AI in its current form isn’t good enough to convince an end user that it’s better than having a real person to talk to.” North America
“There’s a lot of chatter about [Atlassian’s AI] product roadmap — it’s exciting and on the horizon. I know they talked about Atlassian Intelligence as an API call to ChatGPT, but I don’t think that’s innovative or going to satisfy the executives at Atlassian for very long.” North America
“What impact GenAI has on developers is the million-dollar question. I have no idea, but I do know a lot of developers are nervous. It’s supposed to optimize, not replace. But whatever disruption it brings will hit software developers first.” North America
“It was to be expected that Atlassian would bring AI into play, and intelligently created ticketing makes absolute sense. I don’t need a person for simple requests, like password reset or account topics. The initial sorting can be done by AI, but it must be managed, and also [requires] security standards.” EMEA
“Atlassian Intelligence looks extra positive — there are good things in store for us, even if the story is still very new — and must first reach the customer. It is also good that Confluence will play a role here alongside Jira. I think that will increase productivity in many areas.” EMEA
“Atlassian introduced an AI-driven virtual teammate — Atlassian Intelligence — a cloud tool to automate a wide range of routine tasks. In general, it looks interesting. We’ll will run first trials internally, and afterwards we’ll introduce it to our customers.” EMEA
