Microsoft will put its Microsoft 365 services under a global domain name, cloud.microsoft. According to the tech giant, this should make it easier to switch between services. Initially, new services will only receive this domain name.

The first applications to be released under cloud.microsoft domain are “net new services”, Microsoft says. It is not clear when the existing 365 services will be transferred. According to Microsoft, there is a “wide range of effects” that need to be taken into account, which means the transfer can’t happen that quickly.

Microsoft currently uses many different domain names. For example, for Teams it’s teams.microsoft.com, for Outlook outlook.live.com, and the web versions of many other 365 apps, like Word and PowerPoint, are all part of onedrive.live.com. And now we intend to visit these services, for example, teams.cloud.microsoft and outlook.cloud.microsoft.

According to Microsoft, it is safer to use the .microsoft domain than, for example, .com, because the manufacturer has exclusive rights to this domain. This allows for better security protocols and management controls, and makes domain spoofing more difficult, according to Microsoft. Switching between applications with a public domain name should also be faster because there are fewer redirects, and users should receive fewer login prompts.