No you do not need a dot com, but you do need a reliable registrar. Since the domain name is your "storefront" your "corporate HQ" your "main campus" on the Int

No you do not need a dot com, but you do need a reliable registrar. Since the domain name is your "storefront" your "corporate HQ" your "main campus" on the Internet, at some point you have to ask how sure are you that resolving your domain name will get you your servers going forward. There is a tremendous amount of security, monitoring, and protective layering around the .com root servers because they serve names that everyone depends on every day. On the 'lesser' domains you get stories like this : https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_transition_cockup/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_tra... which is kind of scary. Bottom line, from a customer acceptance perspective pretty much any domain name works, but from a corporate longevity perspective you need a TLD that isn't going to get hacked.