Microsoft is unifying the domain names of its Microsoft 365 applications and services as cloud.microsoft. Currently Microsoft apps and services use dozens of different URLs on several different domains. This new announcement will begin to reduce this fragmentation by bringing authenticated, user-facing Microsoft 365 apps and services on to a single, consistent and cohesive domain. We explain more about this development in this article.
Why the change
Right now, Microsoft apps and services use several different URLs on many different domains. As you can see from the word cloud, the URLs range from Officeapps.live.com to bing.net to azureedge.net. Such diverse domain names cause challenges in end user navigation and overhead in administration. This change has been announced to keep things consistent and cause less confusion.
Benefits to users
According to Microsoft, consolidating authenticated user-facing Microsoft 365 experiences onto a single domain will benefit customers in several ways. Here are just some of the benefits you can expect:
- Improve user experience by reducing login prompts, redirects and delays. It will also allow users to switch between different applications more smoothly.
- Reduce complexity for administrators and reduce the list of domain names that need to be granted access, increasing security for tenants while enabling users to access the applications and services they need to get their jobs done.
- Create a better, more connected Microsoft 365 ecosystem for all customers and developers by simplifying development and improving performance across app experiences.
Why cloud.microsoft?
According to the official blog, Microsoft chose “cloud” as the domain name because it is a “durable, scalable, and neutral” word that can cover various online services that may use it in the future. While this announcement only covers Microsoft 365 apps and services, Microsoft has hinted at expanding the cloud.microsoft domain name to other online services in the future.
Currently, only “net-new services” will use the cloud.microsoft domain. In most cases, customers do not need to make any changes to their existing Microsoft 365 services. If there are any existing services that require customers to make some adjustments, Microsoft plans to notify customers at least 30 days in advance so that they can take appropriate action. If you’re wondering what will happen to the Microsoft.com domain, this will still be used by Microsoft for “non-product experiences,” such as marketing, support, and e-commerce.
If you’d like to know more about any of the points covered in this article, contact our team who can help.
