I thought, in terms of Jira and Confluence at least, it was just accepted that being slow and underperforming was the status quo and if it was running at a spee

I thought, in terms of Jira and Confluence at least, it was just accepted that being slow and underperforming was the status quo and if it was running at a speed you'd consider normal, that's an exception (and cause for alarm... like "did that actually save or is there a silent JS error not being displayed?").