Hi,
Is it possible for Atlassian to clarify the future of Atlassian Connect? Notably, the future security/data requirements for Connect apps once Forge is published?
- Atlassian introduced Forge during the last Developer Days,
- To the question “Should I use Forge to build my app”, they said “Existing apps: Use either Connect or Forge. New apps: Use Forge.” — It seems an opinionated push, as if Atlassian had information about a forecoming Connect deprecation.
- To the question: “Is Atlassian Connect deprecated?” they answered: “Atlassian Connect is here to stay”, which is generally the codeword for everything deprecated, adding “but we expect that ease-of-use and features of Forge will make that developers will migrate” (paraphrased with my own words).
- Our app needs to lookup the data in a database, so we’ll have to keep an external storage (either with Connect or with outgress permissions in Forge). But it seems Atlassian wants to emphasize the data ownership capabilities of Forge to customers (which are excellent: data is backed-up by Atlassian, in the future it could be kept in the customer’s location for example, egress in Forge is controlled by the administrators…). What security checklists and data residency features will Atlassian require from Connect apps, to be able to stay relevant on the Marketplace? Will Atlassian develop, for example, a “target_country” header in the Connect installation payload?
- We have to develop on Connect right now because customers are forced to move to the cloud now, but in 3 months we’ll have competition from the pure-Forge apps. Are we going to throw away the code of our current UI in 6 months, because we are pushed to migrate to Forge?
- Also, since Forge and UI Kit are domain-specific DSLs, programmers can’t reuse their skills in other companies, so my current programmers will start leaving if we are on pure-Forge.
My questions:
- Will data security requirements on Atlassian Connect apps quickly increase, which will make it practically impossible for 2-3 developers to maintain a Connect app by next year? Is it just a bad idea to introduce a new Atlassian Connect app in 2 weeks?
- What will be the new requirements for Atlassian Connect apps by next year?
- Is an app that requires a database a bad business idea for the Atlassian platform in the long term?
Thank you,
Adrien Ragot, for Requirement Yogi