Arizona State Retirement System Offloads Maintenance After Cloud Migration

Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS), a public pension fund that manages retirement plans for employees across Arizona, wanted to offload infrastructure maintenance and give time back to their teams. Previously relying on Jira Data Center and Confluence Data Center, ASRS decided to invest in an Atlassian Cloud migration.

Committed to providing retirement security to over 650,000 members, ASRS partnered with Praecipio to navigate the complexities of cloud migration. With Praecipio’s guidance, the client successfully transitioned their Jira and Confluence instances to the cloud, building a more efficient Atlassian ecosystem.

At first, the ASRS cloud migration seemed straightforward, but, as with most migrations, unexpected challenges emerged, complicating the journey to becoming a cloud-first organization.

The first issue ASRS encountered was with their single sign-on (SSO). As a government entity, ASRS did not have complete control over its identity provider, which was partially managed at the state level. The state active directory handled identity and SSO, with permissions synchronized from the agency-level Active Directory group memberships. Government-managed identity providers adhere to strict security and compliance standards, creating difficulties in aligning these protocols with cloud-based SSO systems.

Another obstacle was with User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Due to limited bandwidth, ASRS teams could not thoroughly plan and execute UAT, which left many issues undiscovered until the end of UAT and even after the migration. Additionally, ASRS relied heavily on third-party apps, especially in their Confluence environment. Many of these apps did not migrate smoothly since Data Center and Cloud operate quite differently. 

For example, four different content formatting tools used by ASRS affected over 1,000 Confluence pages with macros that did not transfer well. As a result, several Confluence pages, including key documentation, did not function properly post-migration and left users frustrated. 

Praecipio collaborated with the ASRS team, the Arizona state government, and Atlassian to ensure a seamless and compliant SSO implementation. This involved meticulous planning, coordination, and communication. Our team also developed custom code to synchronize group memberships from the Arizona State Active Directory into the Atlassian Cloud.

To compensate for the lack of UAT, Praecipio engaged with the ASRS user community post-migration to address specific issues, repair broken Confluence pages, and replace faulty macros. We dedicated significant time to restoring key documentation and converting content from the legacy editor to the new editor.

Regarding security, Praecipio worked closely with Atlassian and third-party vendors to ensure all applications complied with AZRAMP standards or had an approved exception. We also partnered with the ASRS legal department to get clearance for installing third-party apps, ensuring the cloud environment remained secure, compliant, and protected sensitive retirement data.

Since migrating to the cloud, ASRS has increased operational efficiency, improved alignment across teams, and offloaded maintenance. ASRS teams have freed up 60-80 hours per month that they previously spent doing security patches and upgrades. Instead of having to maintain Data Center infrastructure and applications, they can now focus on more strategic tasks that significantly impact organizational outcomes.

ASRS anticipates these efficiencies will continue to grow over time due to the enhanced features and scalable infrastructure that Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud offer. This migration enables ASRS to better adapt to evolving public sector needs, ensure compliance, and expedite the delivery of new services to public employees.