• Isolated Cloud gives you single customer tenancy: a dedicated Atlassian Cloud environment — its own compute, storage, and networking in a virtual private cloud — all managed by Atlassian.
• It removes the infrastructure blocker that's kept many regulated organizations on Data Center, while keeping the benefits of vendor-managed cloud.
• It's a genuine Cloud migration, with the same work — and the same opportunities — as any move to Cloud: the chance to restructure content, modernize the experience, and pick up cloud-only capabilities along the way.
• Hosting is just one factor among many in a successful migration. Preparation is what carries the day — knowing what moves over cleanly and what needs rework.
• It’s key to explore and understand your migration path before you commit, prepare for what changes, and rebuild a structured Confluence front door on Cloud instead of just relocating content.

Cloud migration is gathering even more pace with the upcoming Data Center end of life, but one group of organizations has watched from the sidelines: banks, insurers, healthcare and life-sciences companies, defense contractors, and anyone whose security review won't accept shared infrastructure. For them, "just move to Cloud" was never that simple.

Atlassian Isolated Cloud changes that calculation. This guide covers what Isolated Cloud actually is, where it sits among Atlassian's deployment options, and — the part that matters most once the decision is made — what it means for planning your Refined migration.

Over the past few years, we've heard from many Data Center customers that Commercial Cloud doesn't meet their rigorous requirements.

Technically, this has been a massive lift. But being able to offer something that matches what our customers truly need has always been a top priority for us.

— Janette Hagerlund, CTO, Refined

What is Atlassian Isolated Cloud?

Atlassian Isolated Cloud is a single-tenant version of Atlassian Cloud. Where standard (multi-tenant) Cloud keeps customers' data logically separated on shared infrastructure, Isolated Cloud gives your organization its own dedicated compute, storage, and networking inside a virtual private cloud — managed by Atlassian rather than by you.

In practice, that means:

• Isolation by default. Your environment is separated from other tenants, and third-party data egress is blocked at the network boundary by default, so you decide what leaves your environment and when.
• Enterprise security built in. Isolated Cloud includes all Cloud Enterprise plan features and Atlassian Guard Premium by default, and data is pinned to your region.
• Still Atlassian-managed. You get the benefits of vendor-managed SaaS without the overhead of a self-managed solution.

What it isn't: it's not Data Center relocated to the cloud — you're not running servers, Atlassian is. And it's not a way to skip migration. Moving into Isolated Cloud is still a Data Center to Cloud migration, with everything that entails.

Where Isolated Cloud fits in the Atlassian ecosystem

It helps to see the three deployment models side by side:

• Commercial Cloud (multi-tenant) — the default most organizations start on. Shared infrastructure, logically separated data, fully managed by Atlassian.
• Isolated Cloud (single-tenant) — dedicated infrastructure in a virtual private cloud, for organizations that can't accept shared cloud.
• Data Center — self-managed and customer-hosted, and increasingly a different product under the hood. Atlassian and app vendors, Refined included, now build new capabilities in their Cloud products first while Data Center development slows, meaning the gap between the two keeps widening.

Atlassian positions Isolated Cloud for large enterprises with strict data-isolation requirements that prevent adopting shared Commercial Cloud — most often financial services, public sector, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. It carries the Cloud Enterprise feature set plus Guard Premium, and Atlassian's Isolated Cloud currently supports Confluence, Jira, and Jira Service Management. (Refined's Isolated Cloud support is Confluence-only for now — more on that below).

If your organization delayed their Data Center end of life migration specifically because shared cloud couldn't clear internal risk review, this is the option built for that situation.

What Isolated Cloud means for your migration

It's still a Cloud migration, not a lift-and-shift

The infrastructure is different; but the migration is familiar. Moving from Data Center to Isolated Cloud involves the same fundamentals — and the same opportunities — as any Cloud migration: it's the moment to restructure content, revisit macros and apps, reset permissions cleanly, and redesign the experience for how people actually work in Cloud. Isolated Cloud changes where your instance runs; the path to get there is the same proven one thousands of teams have already taken.

Your security and compliance teams are allies here

Isolated Cloud exists to satisfy exactly the requirements your security, compliance, and legal teams care about, so this is an infrastructure project where they're natural allies. Bringing them in early means architecture, data-handling, and approvals get worked out together, and the plan comes out stronger for it. It does take planning, so build their reviews into the timeline from the start rather than treating them as a final gate.

When Isolated Cloud is the right call — and when it's overkill

It makes sense when you have regulatory or contractual data-isolation requirements, when data sensitivity or sovereignty rules out shared cloud, or when internal governance won't approve multi-tenant infrastructure.

It makes sense when you have regulatory or contractual data-isolation requirements, when data sensitivity or sovereignty rules out shared infrastructure, or when internal governance won't approve multi-tenant infrastructure.

For most other organizations, Commercial Cloud is the right home: it already meets high security and compliance standards, at a fraction of the cost. Isolated Cloud carries a real price premium and added operational complexity because it solves one specific problem — dedicated infrastructure — so it's a deliberate choice for teams with a genuine isolation requirement, not a default upgrade. Match the option to the requirement.

Isolated Cloud changes the infrastructure, not the migration fundamentals

This is worth being direct about, because candor is what earns trust with the people scrutinizing your plan: the differences between Data Center and Cloud still apply. Macros behave differently. Page editors differ. change. Some apps work differently or need Cloud equivalents.

Isolated Cloud changes the walls around your instance, not the contents you're moving in. Teams that treat it as a shortcut get surprised. Teams that plan for a genuine migration don't.

Read Refined’s migration guides for information on differences between Refined apps on DC and Cloud.

Refined and Isolated Cloud migrations

Refined is the experience layer for Atlassian Confluence and Jira Service Management — the structured, governed front door that turns native Atlassian content into something your audiences can actually navigate.

On Isolated Cloud, Refined currently supports Confluence, so the guidance below is written for a Confluence migration; Refined for Jira Service Management support on Isolated Cloud isn't available yet.

A few practical guidelines on deciding on your Refined migration and how to go about it:

See your own migration path before you commit. The migration advisor maps your situation — what carries over cleanly, what needs rework, and where the real effort sits — so you walk into stakeholder reviews with a plan instead of a guess.

Prepare with a clear picture of what changes. A structured preparation guide walks you through the parts that trip teams up — macro differences, layout changes, permission adjustments — before they become launch-day problems. In a high-stakes environment, fewer unknowns is most of the battle.

Rebuild the experience, not just relocate the content. A migration that only moves content leaves you with the same raw Confluence in a new place. Refined runs inside your Isolated Cloud environment — within the same isolation boundary, not bolted on outside it — so you can rebuild a structured, audience-aware front door on top of Confluence: curated navigation, reusable layouts, and consistent theming. Stand it up in parallel to test and refine before you switch anyone over. After cutover, that's what drives adoption and protects the Confluence investment you just migrated, instead of leaving people to relearn where everything lives.

How to approach the decision

A few principles keep complex migrations on track:

• Start with requirements, not solutions. Write down what you actually have to satisfy — isolation, residency, compliance — before you compare deployment models.
• Involve the right people early. Security, compliance, and legal will shape the plan; bringing them in late is how timelines slip.
• Evaluate Cloud options deliberately. Weigh standard and Isolated Cloud against your requirements, not against a preference for whichever sounds most cautious.
• Think in phases. Treat migration as a transformation with stages, not a single cutover event.

Complex migrations don't have to be risky

Isolated Cloud adds scrutiny and stakeholders, which can make a migration feel heavier than it needs to be. But what determines whether a migration goes well was never the environment — it's the preparation. Know what's changing, plan for the rework, and rebuild an experience people will actually use on the other side.

Two ways to start:

• See what your move involves: check out your own migration path with Refined's migration advisor.
• Planning a Confluence migration to Cloud or Isolated Cloud? Book a migration assessment and we'll help you scope it.

Raj Sehmi is on the product marketing team at Refined, the experience layer for Atlassian Confluence and Jira Service Management.