[user22]

Let's say we have an announced release schedule on may 1st. With the tools down, there is no way to meet that date. For a 4 billion dollar company, this can make a huge difference in revenue. For a public company, the stock will definitely drop when it's announced the revenue goals were missed because the tools were down.

For companies of size, the cost of tools being down for 3 weeks can easily be in the multi-millions of dollars.

[brimble]

Again, part of the trouble is it's hard to gain enough certainty that the thing you switch to—self-hosted, or another service—won't be at least as bad. You can look at their past record, but then, when's the last time Atlassian had this happen? (or maybe they've been having similar issues every year or two and I've just not noticed, in which case, yeah, it's probably a safe bet that switching to almost anything else would be an improvement)