Integrating AI and Data Analytics with Tiffany To at Atlassian Team ’24

This is techron tv. Hi everyone. Mitch Ashley here at Atlassian, team 24 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

We are talking with some of the folks, uh, inside of Atlassian and talking about some of the great announcements that they've made, uh, talks that they've had here at Team 24. And, uh, a lot of big things are happening, so I'm pleased to be joined by Tiffany Tow. Is that Right?

Correct. Great. Excellent.

And you are SVP of, uh, enterprise and Platforms, is that Right? That's right, that's right. Excellent.

That sounds like a really big job. Tell me, tell me what it Does feel like a lot of responsibility. Yeah.

Um, Atlasian has over 300,000 customers, and so many of those customers have grown with us for quite a long time, right. Sometimes 20 plus years. And so my job, my team's job is to ensure that we're building the best cloud platform possible for those customers.

Then it, it's gonna scale and perform and do everything they need as an enterprise. And they're always pushing the envelope. And so, uh, we're always trying to make sure that we're one step ahead and we're building for what they need.

So, you know, when you, when you provide a great kind of solution or something that people can work with, oftentimes they start to push the boundaries of what, oh, we didn't know they were gonna use it for that. Oh, we're using it. Maybe they're using it outside of it, and suddenly you're Yes.

An enterprise solution, right. Not just in it. Certainly that's been part of the Atlassian story too, right?

That's exactly right. I think that a lot of our heritage is we build really great products. Everyone knows us for Jira and Confluence, and then all the subsequent products like Trello, all the way through to our recent Loom acquisition.

But one of the things that our customers have taught us is that it's not about those products individually being great, which they are. It's about how they fit together into a system that drives, like you said, all the workflows they need for their teams to do work. Um, and so they do come up with really new, really innovative ways to use our products and, um, push them to their limits.

But I think that's what makes the job fun. We're always thinking about, okay, what else do we need to do to scale some of these workflows? Mm-Hmm.

Um, what could we do to simplify the way some of our products work together? So that's a big part of, I think the next shift and evolution for the company is thinking about not just individual products, but as you said, solutions, how they start to fit together for these Customers. How do you make that shift?

It's, it's, there's a mindset to it, right? Yes. And, you know, it's gotta translate down into product leaders and developers and people that are creating, continue to evolve and innovate the product.

How do you make that kind of shift that can, that can't be like, flip a switch and ready To go, right? No, for sure. You're exactly right.

It's definitely not an overnight type of thing. Um, I don't think that it, it's something that you can do easily or lightly because it's gonna be a multi-year type of journey that you take. Um, Atlassian's been investing in our cloud platform for, I think over six years now.

Mm. And so I think it started with the realization that the cloud wave has been happening. Everyone is gonna be moving, not just data, but apps, workflows, so many things into the cloud.

And so for us to kind of deliver the best value for our customers, we needed to rethink how we architect our products. And so we built a platform from scratch in the cloud that all these products run on top of, but not just the products, but all these workflows. And so that's where I think customers are gonna see so much more power and flexibility, because it's not, here's product A and product B on premise, and I'm trying to stitch them together.

It's, I have a platform, it's got an infrastructure layer with services. I have a data layer that's delivering data consolidation and services, and then you have all your apps that can run on top of it. And then we haven't even got into it.

But then there's ai, which is super exciting as well. And you made some great advancements. I have a chance to talk with folks about some of the announcements there too.

You know, I think about this happens in other technologies, like with CRM and ERP, it kind of starts to venture out of its original main business application of what it was. And while that can be great, it can work out as a strategy. Sometimes, you know, applications kind of have a DNA of how they think about solving problems.

Mm-Hmm. And sort of A-A-C-R-M and an ERP view of the world doesn't work for everything. And sometimes you start to push it too far and you're like, okay, now what do I do?

It seems to me, having worked with Jira for so many years and Confluence in the other tools, it it's, it's a solution that can be applied to a lot of things. We've used it in IT and ITSM and others, but talk about how the enterprises are now kinda helping you enter into that or continue to evolve into that enterprise space. You're already obviously there, but you, you have business users, right.

Who are now building applications and doing things with your technology, Right? That's exactly right. I think it's a pretty exciting evolution because when you think about the core of what Jira and Confluence two, it was very much about connecting those dev teams or IT teams together to build software.

But now when we think about all enterprises being digital, right? And every company is a software company, you actually need so many other functions to work together. And especially when you think about AI and automation and all these things, so much of the baseline of that work is gonna be so much more efficient.

So the hard bit is actually more around the people strategy and collaboration happening. Mm-Hmm. And so I think that's where we have a unique opportunity because Jira is a technical tool, like that's how it's perceived.

But I think that at the end of the day, um, more than half of the users that come into Jira, they're not developers. Mm-Hmm. It's actually the rest of the, the product manager, the program manager, marketing designers.

And so the next stage of us as a solution is becoming much more of an operating system for a digital company. So we wanna have all that flexibility and power, but I think that we wanna be a lot more inviting of all of the users in the company, whatever function they're from. Um, because what we're seeing with products like Jira work management that came out, um, last year is that folks from, whether it's HR or marketing, like they can make use of all these functions as well, but they also don't wanna work in a silo.

They wanna be collaborating together across the company. A lot of the data they'd like to use is already in there. Right?

That's right. Talk about, so talk about some of the announcements that have been made. Love to hear about that.

Yeah. I, one of the really exciting things for me personally that we announced, um, at the event this year is the Atlassian system of work. And I like to tell customers system of work.

Hmm. Is that some like newfangled technology, and I tell them, no, it's just us acknowledging what you've had to build. Like you're crafting and stitching all these things together.

You're having to duct tape it. And Atlassian recognizes we could be a lot more helpful in this journey. Uh, with all the investments that we've made in the platform, bringing data together and providing integration points.

We actually can be a bit more opinionated about helping you build the right system of work to your earlier question. Mm-Hmm. What are you trying to do?

Is it an it dev workflow? Is it marketing that needs to be better connected? We wanna help you understand, hey, where are teams, um, collaborating well, where they're not, and then how can we actually recommend how to plug all these Lego pieces together?

So I think that's a pretty exciting new stage for us because it allows us to, I think, solve much harder problems for our customer. Mm-Hmm. Which is what they've been asking for from Us.

It seems like if I, if I understand, uh, it's almost like taking a systemic view of what the work is happening across the organization. Wherever it happens doesn't matter. It's not like this tool for that team, that tool for that team.

Um, because a lot, so much of our world is collaborative, right? I mean That's right. Especially after going digital transformation and covid and all the things that Yes.

Sort of forced the issue of helping break down at least some with those silos. Maybe a lot. In some cases.

Very much so. And I think that when you look back at the Agile transformation, and I shouldn't say look back 'cause customers are still going through all this agile transformation work, I still feel like it hearkened back to this like kind of factory model. And it was like, no, it's not a factory model.

We can do these much faster loops, but it was still very focused on development, right? It was like, okay, software can be written in these loops. Hmm.

But now, as you said, it's the collaboration is across so many functions and time zones. Right? Um, and so you actually need those loops to think beyond just a dev and a software team.

It's like, how do I collaborate faster with all the constituents? So it does require a more systemic view. Mm-Hmm.

Um, I think it also means there's no one perfect solution, but I think that's where Atlassian shines. We've always been, um, focused on making sure that our products are as flexible and powerful as possible. Because with 300,000 customers, there's definitely no one size fits all.

Yeah. They aren't doing all aren't doing the same thing. Yeah.

It's kinda the adaptability to different problems. It seems like that's a real strength as well. And not just one product.

I mean Jira as well as Confluence. And you know, I think about discovery and compass and, you know, different kinds of collaboration than we would think of we might do within our project management schedule, our workflow, um, but also think about metrics and measurements and you're, you're setting on so much great data That That's right. Uh, you, you're finding new ways to take advantage of it, which great.

Well, That's what customers tell us. Um, I've had quite a few customers say, Hey, we standardize on putting data into your tools. Right?

JIRA's our system of record. We put all our knowledge into Confluence. You guys have a gold mine, but you're not helping us actually get good value out of it.

Which is why, um, last year we announced Atlassian Analytics. It was like our first time we had a common data lake for all our products. And we had a, um, out of the box analytics tool on top of it.

Um, and now it's like one year later. It's pretty exciting at the show this week, we have so many customers from Southwest Airlines to Ford that are presenting on their use cases on top of this analytics tool. Interesting.

And you think, okay, that's old news. We like, we've had analytics and data forever, but it hasn't been very usable. Right?

It's like, oh, you need to be a data scientist and you need to get all the data into a data lake and you need expensive tools. And it's like, well, that makes the data not very useful. Right?

If you want teams to make quick decisions, right? When they're planning or when they're handing off and collaborating, they actually need that insight kind of at their fingertips. And so that's a big part of our vision in the system, is we want that data to be accessible in the apps themselves.

Yeah. And so the next kind of wave, one of the announcements, um, for Atlassian Analytics is that we're not just giving you easier to use dashboards out of the box. We're taking those metrics and we're embedding them right into the individual tools.

Okay. So with features like, um, smart links where you can embed those insights into, whether it's Compass or Confluence or Jira, now it's like democratizing a lot of those insights, which I think is exciting. 'cause that means all of us can be more efficient and effective together.

So you're taking out that sort of setup, all the effort you normally have to go through to like, okay, build this thing so now I can get the data and do the analytics out of it, you know? That's right. Make it make it easy for me to get a, get the time to value to be fairly short.

That's right. And then if you think about AI on top of that, it's even, it's like a whole nother wave that we are just starting to scratch the surface on. Because what's unique about our data model is not just, Hey, we're quickly getting the data for you.

It's that we actually map to the, the way the team does the work. So we look at very specific objects about, uh, the team and who's doing the work, what work they're doing, which often is in Jira, but could be in other tools. We're looking at, um, data that might be related to that work, right?

That might be in Confluence, that might be in a whiteboard. And so we actually form a bit more of a, a graph directed view of that teamwork flow. And so that means we're not just giving you very structured kind of typical insights.

We're trying to do it in a way where, um, you're gonna be able to see things that you wouldn't normally be able to see. Um, it's gonna be much more contextualized. And so that's where the AI aspect comes in.

I think you've chatted with some of the team on that. Yep. We have, Yeah.

Some really great, great things too. Mm-Hmm. You know, it does come up about a graph view about collaboration Mm-Hmm.

And the, the technical folks in the audience probably know what a mm-hmm. Graph is, graph database or graph view. Um, but I think you described it well, which is it's about the connections of all the, how the, all the data relates to other data.

Mm-Hmm. Because you think about the, like, just even the, it's not a personnel system, but all the people data that you have Mm-Hmm. Is of all the people using Confluence and using Jira, that's part of that workflow, right?

Yes. Hooking them into workflows that you've created or need to create. So you've got people part of this built into, it's not just a ticket like, you know, old, the old old days of, you know, no ticketing systems.

Well, I think that's the evolution of how we think about data because uh, I think traditionally it's been like we have so much data we need to structure it and we structure it databases, it's more useful. And yes, when it's structured, it's very useful. It's very powerful.

But a lot of things don't lend themselves well to structure data, like you said. Mm-Hmm. And the people thing is exactly one of those areas.

Sure. I could take an org map and use that to structure how work happens. We both know that's, that's not how work flows.

Right? It's, it's wrong as soon as you save it and people don't fit into one box. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. So for us, um, this data model, we've, uh, announced it as the teamwork graph.

And the reason why it's a teamwork graph is there is both a people graph in it and an object graph. Right. Because the people are your most valuable resource, to be honest.

Right. And they're very dynamic, like we said, in terms of how they're working on things and how they move around. The object graph helps us map the types of work that they're doing.

Um, but then on top of that, we're adding, uh, actions. Uh, we've also recently added a semantic index so that all of that can then be plugged into Atlassian Rvo Mm-Hmm. The new AI announcement.

So now you have all of that insight contextualize all those relationships at your fingertips. So that means when we're building these RVO agents to help you collaborate and work, they have all that context. You don't have to teach them, you know, Tiffany works with this team and these projects are the ones that are interesting to her.

It'll have that from just the teamwork graph itself. It's Not just a flat directory of here's our org chart in digital form. Exactly.

I'm Curious too, um, I don't know if there are any announcements about this, but it seems like the some of the things that you need to manage with that is the security part of it. Access controls. Yes.

Who can do what, who can view what, all that kind of thing. There's also, what are people working on? Mm-Hmm.

Um, you know, and the, and security folks have a view of that data about insider threats and, you know, and, and mm-Hmm. And vulnerabilities or threat, uh, landscape or tax services, thing like that. Is there anything from a security perspective when you're talking with enterprises that they say, here's what we really need to see that you've got in your technology?

Yeah, no, you've hit on a really important area of investment for us because I, I think the idealistic view of collaboration is like everyone should have access to everything. Every, it's all free flowing. But I think the reality is, um, the level of compliance and privacy and all those concerns as you become a mature enterprise or you're serving specific industries that are regulated Mm-Hmm.

Means that you also have a lot of responsibility, right? So you have all that data, it's very powerful, but you have immense responsibility on how you care, take that data. And so customers have been very clear with us, they need our help to really step up the level of, um, security they can provide on top of the access of that data.

So one of the exciting things we're we've announced this week is the access product that has been around now for a number of years, which is about identity and access control. Right? Right.

It's evolved quite a bit. We've started to add a lot more security controls into it. Um, and then we've invested over the last year in adding, um, uh, data loss prevention and threat detection.

And so we've relaunched that, that suite interesting. As Atlassian guard. And so it's very much a commitment to customers that, Hey, we hear you.

The needs that you have for security and access control and information security, um, they've grown. And our products need to deliver, um, those capabilities with you. So it's an area we'll continue to invest in.

Right. Um, I don't think you're ever done with security. That's just the way it goes.

No, I don't think you're ever done with AI or security or data. Right. I don't seem to be the things that there's perpetual, it's always great things.

There's Always innovation. Right. And so, um, the, the good thing is I think for customers, they see that we're committed to continue to invest there.

So as their needs grow, we're gonna invest in more security. Um, and that's something they're gonna hear, continue to see more announcements from Us. It's good.

It's great to hear that. And I think it's smart to relaunch, relaunch access has gar. Yeah.

Given that you've done so much with it. Mm-Hmm. And I remember when ACCESS came out in using that and Yes.

Tying it to our director. I can't remember. It's been too Long ago.

Long ago. Exactly. No, you're exactly right.

And, and that was some things, things even then we had to think about, like, okay, who can see what and get access to what information and confluence, and that was just assumed, right? Enterprises assumed you've got the RAC controls of who can access and do what. Exactly.

And Then now what are the threats and how do we Yes. What's happening? And they want that to be fine grained.

That's a lot of the feedback I've heard is like they want to push the limit of how teams can collaborate. So they want that free flow of information, but they wanna ensure that they're tracking everything. Mm-Hmm.

So the audit, logging, the data classification, those are the types of features that, um, we announced this weekend that we'll continue to build on. Very nice. Mm-Hmm.

Um, you know, one of the terms we've kind of thrown around in the low-code, no-code space is citizen developers, right? Mm-Hmm. Everyday people Yes.

Using tools to, to help their work. I think maybe the first version of that was a spreadsheet, right? Which is love to get rid of a few of those.

Yes. In this process. How do, how do you build products that, um, it technical people as well as, let's call 'em citizen developers, uhhuh, and users can create the kind of tools or create the kind of solutions for themselves as well as working with other teams to do that?

Yeah, I think it's, um, it's one of the benefits of having such a wide customer base. Um, I've worked previously in enterprise software companies where you're focused on just the largest enterprise customer. Mm-Hmm.

And I think when you're in that space, it's easy to like end up tuning your products to a very specific set of personas. Mm-Hmm. But because Atlassian has, has such a wide customer base that we end up getting really amazing feedback from such a wide set of folks using the products in so many different ways that it enables us to start to think about, Hmm, where can we invest to make this a lot easier?

And so, for example, one of the things we've announced, um, this week is that our Jira work management products, which was a version of Jira that we had built for much simpler usage for non-developers, we actually saw a lot of those features being desired by the teams that are doing the development. Okay. So we actually announced bringing Jira work management and Jira software together into one consolidated Jira, which is what customers want.

They actually want the power and the simplicity at the same time. And so some of those things are like having a list view, not having to do a million bits of configuration to get a project going. Mm-Hmm.

Um, having summaries. Right? So there are a lot of those types of simple features that, um, aren't necessarily just for non devs.

They kind of go back and forth. And so now they're all in one Jira. Um, and sometimes it's little things like look and feel like we've had customers tell us just add to the color palette.

'cause there are a lot of those very human elements of design that Okay. Personalization or design. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes such a difference for folks. Um, and then on the other end, I think it's also taking the powerful features and making them a lot easier for folks.

So for example, automation is one of our most, uh, well used features, um, in the platform. And it's great when you know what to do, you can build rules. And we've actually launched this really amazing new interface to be able to put those automation rules together.

But if you're brand new to Jira, you don't know like, right, should I use this? What automation makes sense? Like, and so we've added things like, um, a lot more templates out of the box, um, as well as now you can do a natural language query.

So you can Right. You can just say, you don't have to know how to build a rule. How Do, can I build this?

Or Yeah. I mean, you could just say, build me a rule that, uh, looks for incidents and when there's an incident, send me an email, slack, these three people, um, and spin up a new confluence page. Right?

So we have a comms report. So you can take very, like, very basic strategy and it will build the whole rule for you. Um, and I think that allows us to take something powerful and make it a lot simpler.

And so when you go back to citizen developer, I think it's so much more than that. It means allowing anyone, whether they're in hr, marketing, legal to be as powerful as, you know, a very like, um, a developer that knows our products really, really well. Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm.

Great. So you, you had a, a, uh, super session here. I'm sure you're talking about a lot of these things.

Mm-Hmm. Anything else that you, that you covered in that Yeah. You'd like to highlight?

Sure. Um, so our super session was on that system of work, um, that I talked about earlier. By The way, that's not a new Stephen Covey book, that that's a, that's an Atlassian system of work, the Atlassian system of work.

But I think part of why the name is a little bit more generalized is, I think we recognize this can be anyone's system of work. We owe it to customers to enable all the different use cases that they wanna build on top of our platform, but we also want to help be a little bit more opinionated. 'cause I think that's also what we've heard from customers is we love the flexibility, we love the power, but sometimes we want a bit more help.

Tell us mm-Hmm. Maybe out of the box, what is important to configure? Tell us the best practices that other customers are using.

Mm-Hmm. And so one of the things that's, um, I think powerful about the system of work is that we're gonna anchor on a couple of really key things, um, that we consider teamwork foundations. We consider it foundational because we think everyone in the organization, whether you're a dev like we've talked about, or someone in hr, legal marketing, they all should be able to set goals, align work to those goals, right?

Mm-Hmm. We all have goals. Whatever function that we have or have in the company, um, we have to be able to plan and track, work together, right?

Your view of the timeline can't be different from my view, or we can't coordinate our work. That's number two. And then number three is unleashing knowledge.

So we should ensure that whatever knowledge is being built in one area by one team, that's all fully democratized and usable by everyone without, like we said earlier, needing a lot of investment data science or analytics to like, pull all of that out and share it, make it available to everyone at their fingertips. So that teamwork foundation is something that if we think you give that to everyone in your company, then you can build the most powerful system of work. You can do amazing things because now you're getting everyone in the company on the same page.

So Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Those are primitives everybody has to do, right?

It's set goals, track work, and what was the last one? The third One, unleashed knowledge. Unleashed Knowledge.

That's right. And so those are objects that tie back to that teamwork graph that we talked about. And so we see it being something that, um, you can build on top of.

So we're making that teamwork graph available to our developer community. So customers, marketplace partners, third party, everyone can build on top of that. So I think the workflows are gonna be endless.

So it's just the beginning of the, the system of work journey. Excellent. Mm-Hmm.

Well, when, when customers ask, ask you as a, as a company to kind of go these directions or they're already using your technology that way, and then you make announcements like this, what's the reception been? What do, what do they think of the strategy that you've unveiled? And I'm sure enterprise customers have probably gotten a, a little bit of a preview look at this, um, leading up to the event.

What's, what's the feedback your reaction been? It's been amazing. It's been really, really positive.

I think customers, especially some of our largest enterprise customers, these are all the challenges they've been telling us about for quite a while. So to them it's very much a, yes, Atlassian's gonna partner with us and they're gonna help us build, uh, together like an amazing system of work. So quite a few of them have already reached out to say, how can we be part of, uh, giving you a great feedback loop on the system of work?

So I think it's, it's gonna be a great journey together. Very Good. Yeah.

Well, congratulations. Just some major announcements, big stuff. I'm sure a lot of hard work by a lot of people at lasting going into that.

So congratulations. Thank you So much. Great talking with you Tiffany.

Likewise. All Righty, everybody. You heard it straight from the people thinking about how do we solve these tough problems that, uh, customers are working through and trying to use technology for and solutions.

And here's how we do it. There's the approach we're taking. Makes a lot of sense.

Thank you for joining me, Tiffany Toe, and we'll be back with another great interview here at, uh, team 24 in Las Vegas, Nevada.