A brief history of Atlassian and Jira
Jira software was founded in 2002 by two Computer Science students in Sydney.
What does Jira mean?
The name Jira comes from Godjira or Japanese for Godzilla
What does Atlassian mean?
The name Atlassian comes from Atlas in Greek mythology, a titan condemned to hold up the heavens or sky for eternity podcast interview with Atlassian founders called “How I built this with Guy Raz”. Oh, and Atlassian is the adjective format of Atlas; atlas.com was taken! :P
How did Atlassian start?
Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar met in 1998 while studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, both on a Computer Science Co-op scholarship.
In 2001 however, Mike sent an email to his course mates asking who’d want to help him launch a tech startup after graduation, and Scott was the only one to respond… and that was that.
How did Jira start?
Back in the day, Atlassian offered third-party tech support
When was Jira created?
Atlassian co-founders Mike and Scott wrote a support system in 2002 that they named the Atlassian Support System, where people could file a ticket.
From supporting software to building it
The first version of Jira took 3 months or so, then the 1.0 version, which was good enough for people to use, took around 6 months.
Back when marketing Jira cost nothing
They’d attend software events and corner people to show them the product! They’d sneak in flyers and do all kinds of stunt marketing to get their names known.
An Atlassian/Jira timeline
Atlassian Milestones ATTACH
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2002 - Mike and Scott take out $10,000 to launch Jira 1.0 (an issue tracker they created)
2003 - Confluence (dev collaboration platform) comes to life
2005 - Atlassian gets their 1,000th customer without VC money
2006 - First Codegeist hackathon takes place
- Atlassian Foundation is created (they pledge to donate 1% for nonprofit organizations)
2007 - Atlassian core values are born (= no bullshit, heart, balance, teamwork, customer matters, be the change); pretty cool, hein…?
2008 - Atlassian acquires a bunch of companies (Bamboo, Fisheye, Crucible, Clover, and Crowd)
2009 - First Atlassian Summit happens
2010 - Bitbucket Cloud (code hosting) joins the Atlassian family
2011 - Atlassian is named Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum (amongst 31 companies)
$102 million in revenue without a Sales Team!
Atlassian introduces Team Calendars to Confluence
2012 - Atlassian Marketplace is launched
- Bitbucket Server is released
2013 - Atlassian announces Jira Service Desk, which later becomes part of Jira Service Management
2014 - Atlassian unlocks GIT for the enterprise
- Announces Atlassian Connect (Next-gen platform to build add-ons for Cloud)
2015 - Atlassian goes public
2017 - Atlassian gets a brand revamp and acquires Trello
2018 - Strategic partnership: Jira with Slack + launches Next-gen projects
2019 - Atlassian acquires AgileCraft, which later becomes Jira Align!
2020 - Atlassian announces discontinuation of Jira Server
- Move to Cloud baby! ☁️
2021 - Enter Jira Work Management
- Jira Service Desk becomes Jira Service Management
What is the modern-day Jira?
- Jira Work Management for project management in general.
- Jira Software includes the base software and agile project management features.
- Jira Service Management is used by IT operations or business service desks.
- Jira Align is used for strategic product and portfolio management.