In a landmark move that reshaped the landscape of workplace collaboration tools, Slack announced its acquisition of the intellectual property for Hipchat and Stride from Atlassian. This wasn’t a conventional corporate buyout but a strategic partnership that saw Atlassian discontinuing its own communication platforms and making a small equity investment in Slack. For the end-user, this signaled a major migration. For the technical teams behind the scenes—the system administrators, DevOps engineers, and IT professionals—it marked the beginning of a complex and challenging transition. This acquisition was more than a headline; it was a catalyst for re-evaluating infrastructure, security, and automation, forcing a mass migration from a often self-hosted, familiar environment to a cloud-native SaaS behemoth.
This article provides an in-depth analysis of the Slack-Hipchat deal, focusing specifically on the technical implications for teams managing the migration. We will explore the process from a System Administration perspective, covering everything from decommissioning a Linux Server running Hipchat Data Center to rebuilding a sophisticated DevOps toolchain within Slack. This is a story of market consolidation, but it’s also a practical case study in modern IT infrastructure management, touching upon crucial skills in Linux Administration, Bash Scripting, and cloud integration.
The End of an Era: Deconstructing the Atlassian-Slack Deal
For years, Atlassian’s Hipchat was a formidable competitor to Slack, particularly in organizations already heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket). Hipchat offered two distinct deployment models: a cloud version and a self-hosted version known as Hipchat Data Center (previously Hipchat Server). This latter option was especially popular among companies with stringent data residency or security requirements, as it allowed them to run their communication platform on their own infrastructure, often on a dedicated Linux Server.
A Strategic Pivot, Not a Simple Sale
The deal, announced in July 2018, was multifaceted. Slack didn’t buy Atlassian’s chat business outright. Instead, it acquired the IP for Hipchat Cloud, Hipchat Server, Hipchat Data Center, and the newer Stride platform. In return, Atlassian took a minor equity stake in Slack. The most significant outcome was Atlassian’s decision to exit the real-time communication market entirely. They announced a shutdown timeline for Hipchat and Stride, providing customers with a migration path to Slack. This strategic partnership allowed Atlassian to focus on its core suite of project management and development tools while deepening its integration with the undisputed market leader in chat.
Why Atlassian Waved the White Flag
The decision was driven by the sheer momentum of Slack. While Hipchat was a solid product, Slack had captured the cultural zeitgeist, boasting a massive ecosystem of third-party apps, a more polished user experience, and explosive user growth. Competing would have required immense and continuous investment. By partnering with Slack, Atlassian offloaded the burden of the chat wars and solidified a best-in-class communication solution for its vast customer base. For customers, however, the choice was made for them: adapt and migrate, or find an entirely new solution. For the vast majority, the path of least resistance led directly to Slack.
A System Administrator’s Migration Playbook
For technical teams running Hipchat Data Center, the migration was a significant undertaking. It involved far more than simply exporting and importing data; it was a full-fledged infrastructure project requiring careful planning and execution across multiple domains of Linux Administration.
Phase 1: Decommissioning the On-Premise Hipchat Server
The first step was to safely retire the existing Hipchat infrastructure. These servers were typically running on common Linux Distributions like CentOS, Red Hat Linux (RHEL), or within an Ubuntu Tutorial framework for setup. The decommissioning process was a critical exercise in due diligence.
1. Final Data Backup: Before touching anything, a comprehensive Linux Backup was essential. This wasn’t just a database dump; it included the full application directory, file uploads, configurations, and logs. System administrators would use a combination of database tools (for the PostgreSQL Linux backend) and file system utilities. A simple but effective backup could be scripted using Shell Scripting.
#!/bin/bash
# A simple script to back up Hipchat data
TIMESTAMP=$(date +"%F")
BACKUP_DIR="/mnt/backups/hipchat/$TIMESTAMP"
HIPCHAT_DATA_DIR="/var/atlassian/application-data/hipchat"
mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR
echo "Starting backup of Hipchat data to $BACKUP_DIR..."
# Using rsync for efficient file copying
rsync -a --info=progress2 $HIPCHAT_DATA_DIR/ $BACKUP_DIR/data
# Backing up the PostgreSQL database
pg_dump -U hipchat -h localhost hipchat > $BACKUP_DIR/hipchat_db.sql
echo "Backup complete."
This kind of Linux Automation ensures a reliable snapshot. This task also required careful Linux Disk Management, ensuring the backup destination had sufficient space, often involving checks on systems using LVM or RAID for storage redundancy.
2. Service Shutdown: Once the backup was verified, the Hipchat services were stopped using standard Linux Commands via the Linux Terminal, such as systemctl stop hipchat.service. Monitoring tools like htop or the classic top command would be used to confirm that all related processes had terminated gracefully.
3. Network and Security Realignment: The server, now inactive, needed to be isolated. This involved updating the Linux Firewall. Rules in iptables or UFW that previously allowed inbound traffic to the Hipchat ports would be removed. This step in Linux Security is crucial to prevent the abandoned server from becoming a vulnerability. Access was often restricted to only Linux SSH for final data retrieval.
Phase 2: Data Export, Transformation, and Import
Atlassian provided an export tool, but the data often required cleansing and transformation to fit Slack’s import requirements. This is where scripting skills became invaluable.
Many teams turned to Python Scripting to handle this ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process. A Python Linux environment is perfect for this, as its powerful data manipulation libraries (like Pandas and JSON) can parse the exported user lists, chat histories, and file metadata. A typical Python Automation script would:
- Read the JSON or CSV exports from Hipchat.
- Map Hipchat user IDs and email addresses to Slack user IDs.
- Reformat timestamps and message structures.
- Handle file attachments by creating a manifest for the Slack import tool.
- Log any errors or data inconsistencies for manual review.
This task highlighted the power of Python System Admin skills, bridging the gap between raw data and a usable format for the new platform. It also involved a deep understanding of the Linux File System to navigate the exported data structures.
Rebuilding the DevOps Toolchain in Slack
Perhaps the most significant impact of the migration was on Linux DevOps workflows. Hipchat was deeply embedded in the automation and notification fabric of many engineering teams. Replicating and improving this in Slack was a top priority.
Integrating CI/CD and System Monitoring
Teams relied on Hipchat bots for real-time alerts from a variety of systems. This included:
- CI/CD Pipelines: Notifications from Jenkins, GitLab CI, or CircleCI about build successes or failures.
- Performance Monitoring: Warnings about high CPU or memory usage on production servers.
– System Monitoring: Alerts from tools like Nagios, Zabbix, or Prometheus about the health of a Linux Web Server (running Apache or Nginx) or a Linux Database server (like MySQL Linux).
The migration required re-routing all these webhooks and notification endpoints to Slack’s API. While Slack has official integrations for most major tools, this was an opportunity to refine the notification strategy. Teams moved from noisy, monolithic notification channels to more targeted, context-aware alerts. For instance, alerts related to a specific microservice running in a Linux Docker container could be routed to the dedicated channel for that service’s development team.
The Evolution of ChatOps
ChatOps—the practice of managing infrastructure and workflows from within a chat client—had to be rebuilt. While Hipchat had bots, Slack’s extensive app marketplace and powerful APIs opened up new possibilities for Linux Automation.
Engineers used tools like Ansible or custom Python DevOps scripts to create sophisticated Slack bots. These bots could execute complex tasks on remote servers in a secure manner. A developer could issue a command from a Slack channel like:
/deploy my-app-v2 to staging
This command would trigger a bot running on a server, which in turn would execute an Ansible playbook or a script to deploy a new container to a Kubernetes Linux cluster. This powerful workflow, managed through Slack, streamlined operations and improved transparency. This kind of advanced automation is a core tenet of modern System Administration and is often developed using Linux Development tools like GCC and the Vim Editor on distributions like Fedora Linux or even Arch Linux for cutting-edge environments.
Strategic Impact and Lessons Learned
The Slack-Hipchat deal was a watershed moment, offering several key takeaways for the tech industry and the professionals within it.
The Dominance of Cloud-Native SaaS
The migration cemented the industry’s shift away from self-hosted applications toward fully managed SaaS solutions. While on-premise gives total control, it comes with the significant overhead of maintenance, security, and upgrades. For many, the operational cost of managing a Hipchat server—from patching the underlying Linux Kernel to managing Linux Users and File Permissions—outweighed the benefits. The deal accelerated the adoption of Linux Cloud infrastructure, with companies becoming more comfortable relying on services running on AWS Linux or Azure Linux instances.
The Importance of Adaptable Skills
For system administrators, the event underscored the evolution of the role. The job is no longer just about managing individual servers. It’s about managing services, APIs, and integrations. Core skills in Linux Networking and security (understanding concepts like SELinux) remain vital, but they must be complemented by proficiency in scripting (Python, Bash), automation tools (Ansible), and container technologies (Docker Tutorial, Kubernetes). This migration was a real-world test of a modern sysadmin’s ability to adapt and orchestrate complex, cross-platform solutions.
Conclusion
The acquisition of Hipchat by Slack was far more than a simple business transaction. It was a pivotal event that forced thousands of technical teams to undertake a complex migration, effectively pushing them further into the modern cloud-native ecosystem. It served as a practical, and sometimes painful, lesson in the importance of robust backup strategies, the power of automation through Python Scripting and Shell Scripting, and the necessity of rethinking security for a cloud-first world.
Ultimately, the transition from a self-hosted Hipchat server to the Slack cloud was a microcosm of the broader digital transformation happening across the industry. It demonstrated that the most valuable technical professionals are not those who resist change, but those who leverage it as an opportunity to build more resilient, efficient, and automated systems. The legacy of Hipchat is not just in its code, now owned by Slack, but in the invaluable experience it gave a generation of administrators and engineers in navigating the ever-shifting technological landscape.
