tl;dr: Forge is not only for full-featured add-ons, it also allows Atlassian admins, contractors and consultants to create small but effective scripting solutions for their own consumption. Forge has created a future of micro add-ons.
Atlassian's success, and the success of Jira in particular, is largely due to extensibility having been built into the platform from Day One. Early versions of Jira were far from perfect but enthusiasts started building their own extensions and filling the gaps quickly. This sparked the advent of a community of add-on vendors and allowed great add-ons to be created, such as Greenhopper, which was later acquired by Atlassian, became Jira Agile and is now a core part of Jira Software.
It therefore came as no surprise to anyone that Atlassian Cloud was also designed as an extensible solution, with Connect being the framework for building such extensions.
However, whilst writing some simple add-ons with Connect is not entirely beyond the skillset of an average Atlassian Consultant or contractor, having to run the add-on and look after it is well outside the scope of what an Atlassian consultant, contractor or admin would call their core responsibilities.
This, however, has changed with Atlassian Forge. Forge creates a much cleaner and more controlled framework, and crucially it is based on the premise that running the add-on on a day-to-day basis is Atlassian's responsibility. This relieves the add-on creator of that burden.
This has two effects:-
Creating add-ons has become more accessible to those who are not add-on vendors or developers by trade
Even the smallest extension is worth creating as a Forge add-on since running it is no longer an overhead to consider
My prediction is that Jira and Confluence admins will start writing their own little scripts and create more and more micro add-ons for their own purposes and their own sole consumption.
I also predict that the average add-on on the Atlassian Marketplace will become smaller, and Marketplace vendors will consider creating more modular solutions where you pick-and-choose the functionality you need from a tapas-style menu of micro solutions.
So, ultimately, with Forge Atlassian have created an environment where nothing is too small to be created as an add-on.
And whilst most Marketplace vendors will stick with Connect for quite a while, and whilst most average Jira admins won't be publishing full-featured Forge add-ons on the Marketplace, Atlassian have a created a framework that can be used by anyone, not just developers or add-on vendors.
Forge is literally for everyone.
If you want to learn more about Forge, have a look at my course on Udemy: Jira Cloud App Development with Atlassian Forge
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