New domain for Microsoft 365 cloud services

On April 26, 2023 Microsoft announced the introduction of a new domain for their cloud services, primarily for Microsoft 365-related services. The new domain is called cloud.microsoft. Brand new services will get a subdomain and utilize it. As-is services will not yet use them but will be unified and consolidated under the new cloud.microsoft domain. As the announcement states the transition to the domain will be done slowly over time. Although it is important (as always) to keep your allow list for Office 365 URLs and IPs current because the domain *.cloud.microsoft is now already listed and you should add required rules to your firewalls, proxies and what have you.

Microsofts says it tries to carry this out as seamless as possible but if any action is required by IT admins a notification at least 30 days before the change applies is sent out.

In case you have questions there is a Ask Microsoft Anything session planned, for May 24, 2023 to ask your questions which aren’t answered by the announcement and related information.

Source: Introducing cloud.microsoft: a unified domain for Microsoft 365 apps and services – Microsoft Community Hub

Update July 22, 2024

Source: Microsoft 365 Message Center Notification MC807452

Update September 30, 2024 – October 6, 2024

Source: M365 Message Center Weekly Digest September 30, 2024 – October 6, 2024

Conclusion, opinion and summary

I’m looking forward to this upcoming change and transition because it will simplify the domain names and you’ll be better able to remember it. Especially as a user I can quickly navigate from one app to another by just changing the <service>.cloud.microsoft instead of figuring out what it was or click through different portals or the Microsoft 365 portal to get there. However, I suppose that this transition will take months and probably even years until most legacy URLs will be fully vanished. Microsoft states “slower pace” what ever this means but to me it implies that the transition will happen in a moderate to low speed. We shall see. Stay tuned and monitor your Microsoft 365 message center notifications.

erik365.blog