Focus on the future

Since launching in 2001, Homegate AG has become the largest real estate portal in Switzerland and one of the leading digital companies in the country. With more than 110,000 properties listed and 200 million-plus page views each month, the site is now the go-to Swiss resource for home buying, selling, and renting.  

Clearing the clutter to make room for innovation

Homegate AG already had a trusted partner in beecom, who supported them with Atlassian licenses and solution guidance, so when the company was considering who could help them with the migration to Atlassian cloud products, the answer was obvious. As Peter says, “Why look for another partner when you already have such a great one?”

After securing beecom for this new project, Homegate AG worked with Director of Technical Services Maurice Ray and his team to start pre-migration planning. Over the next year, they collaborated to clean up Homegate AG’s Jira and Confluence Server instances and prepare for migration. Meanwhile, Peter coordinated with Homegate AG’s leadership to keep them informed and coordinate timing to ensure minimal disruption during the transition.

Since Jira was the core of Homegate AG’s Atlassian ecosystem, the team focused there first. beecom began by analysing the addon usage and cloud addon availability to eliminate Jira apps that weren’t being used, which reduced the instance size and lowered ongoing operational costs. Then, they cleaned up the user database by standardizing usernames and removing duplicates, created a proof of concept, and completed a partial migration to validate the process and test data before the real migration. Finally, beecom created a cloud export from Jira that could be uploaded to the cloud when everything was ready.

beecom and Homegate AG then turned their attention to Confluence, which Peter calls the company’s “central information system and point of truth.” Similar to the cleanup process they followed with Jira, the team used Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant to expedite cleanup and migration for Confluence. 

Peter says,“First we tried to export the data manually from the server and then import it into the cloud. But this didn't really work because all the users weren’t correctly assigned, so it looked like pages were created by ‘no name’ or ‘no user.’” 

That’s when they discovered the Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant. “When I tried this, I thought, ‘Wow, that's easy!’” Peter recalls. “You just pick what you want to migrate. We tested it with a small space, and everything was there. Users were correctly assigned. Permissions were assigned. It was great!

Safe and simple user management with Atlassian Guard and Okta

As the team finished preparations for the Jira and Confluence migrations, they also seized the opportunity to automate user provisioning, enable single sign-on, and enhance security with Atlassian Guard and Okta access management technology.

“Before, we had to manually add and remove users for each platform and manually manage permissions. And in that process, which happened once or twice a week, you had to think about so many things: who needs access, what permissions they need, which boxes to check, etc.,” Peter explains. “Now [with Atlassian Guard], user management is automatic and centralized in one place.”

Peter says integrating Okta with Atlassian Guard has also improved security with two-factor authentication and more advanced password management, while giving employees faster, easier single sign-on access to the systems they use every day. These additions have saved hours each week and reduced mental load. “It’s such a big improvement,” Peter says. “I almost can’t imagine what it was like before.”

Big payoff, no tradeoffs

With Jira, Confluence, Atlassian Guard, and Okta ready to go, Peter and beecom felt confident going live. Fortunately, all their collaboration and preparation paved the way for success. The production migration went smoothly and finished within 24 hours.

Moving forward faster

Since completing the server-to-cloud migration with beecom’s support, Homegate AG has reduced costs by 15 percent, optimized user access and onboarding, and gained more time and energy to focus on innovation. 

Before, Homegate AG staffed one employee for server updates, two to three people for Jira and Confluence updates, and another team member for hardware updates. Now, Peter says, “that's all gone. They can focus on other on-prem solutions (which we want to move too), on Homegate, and on developing themselves (like learning AWS).”

Peter adds that moving to Atlassian cloud has increased uptime and reduced the security risk of hacking on-premise servers. Single sign-on also saves employees a few minutes every day, so they can spend less time logging in and more time on meaningful work. 

While the resource savings, security, and performance improvements have been massive for the business, the biggest change his team has noticed is that Atlassian cloud products “free your mind,” Peter says. “We don't have to think about keeping the server up and running, what to do when we need more space, or how we work. We can focus on Homegate because we don’t have all the servers and instances on our mind.”

With this extra time and mental space, the Engineering team is looking ahead and working on several “Next Gen” projects that will simplify their workflow and help them deliver even better information and products to Swiss consumers. “Our main mission is to be the place in Switzerland that helps people make real estate decisions – not only seeking a new home, but everything [related to real estate],” Peter says. “Moving to the cloud and getting rid of all the old things that were slowing us down will help us move forward faster and focus on innovation.”