Microsoft is making a change in how customers will connect to its many
Microsoft 365 apps and services. While in the past, access to products and services like Office apps,
Teams,
Outlook, and more have been made with a hodgepodge of different domain names, Microsoft has decided to start consolidating all of those services under one domain: cloud.microsoft.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated:
For end users, it will streamline the overall experience by reducing sign-in prompts, redirects, and delays when navigating across apps. For admins, it will drastically reduce the complexity of the allow-lists required to help your tenant stay secure while enabling users to access the apps and services they need to do their work. And for all our customers – and our developers – it will lay a foundation for better and tighter integration across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem by streamlining development and improving performance of cross-app experiences.
Microsoft selected "cloud" as the domain name for its "durable, extensible, neutral term" that covers the many online services that will eventually use it. While today's announcement just covers Microsoft 365 apps and services, it sounds like the cloud.microsoft domain will be adapted for other online services for the company in the future.
The company says that for the moment, only "net-new services" will use the cloud.microsoft domain. Most of the time, there will be no need for customers to make changes to their Microsoft 365 services on their end. If any current service does need some changes by those customers, Microsoft plans to give them at least 30 days of advanced notice so actions can be taken. The standard Microsoft.com domain will still be used by the company for "non-product experiences such as marketing, support, and e-commerce."
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