Microsoft Bids Fond Farewell to Many Old Certs

On Dec. 19, Microsoft Learning certification guru Liberty Munson issued Microsoft's latest Exam and Certification Retirement Roundup. That announcement includes some interesting information. Here's a snippet that may be worth reading more than once:

Many of the upcoming exam retirements reflect the program's evolution to embrace role-based certifications. Because we haven't announced many of the upcoming role-based certifications, I can't be overly specific about the replacement exams. Many of the exams are retiring in the next few months, and I want to give you as much advance notice as possible. This is all the information I can share right now, so take it for what it's worth as you make your certification plans. I promise to share as much information as I can, as soon as I can. Trust me to look out for you!

Although we don't know what's incoming just yet, we now know there are a LOT of outgoing exams and certifications. Let's take a look at some details, shall we?

Retiring Certifcations

Much of what makes up the current Microsoft certification program is going to cease, starting at the end of this month and continuing through through June 30 of the comen year. Here's the scoop:

1. Retiring on Dec. 31, 2018: MCSE: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure, MSCA: Cloud Platform

2. Retiring on Mar. 31, 2019: MCSE: Mobility, MCSA: Office 365, Windows 10, and Dynamics 365

3. Retiring on June 30, 2019: MCSA: Machine Learning and Data Engineering with Azure

Retiring Exams

The following table is reproduced verbatim from Ms. Munson's blog post, with a little bit of reformatting. Actually, there are so many retiring exams that we had to break the table in two. You can see the first half below, then click to the next page for Part Two.

What's interesting about these tables is the final column, where replacement exams (or certifications) are mentioned. I see a complete restructuring of the Microsoft certification program at work.

Why do I say that? Notice that each category of exams that has a replacement uses a new and different exam ID scheme: AZ for Azure and MD for Office, with numbers starting over and using 100 for intro, 200 for intermediate, and 300 for advanced level exams.

Notice also that we're seeing references to several new certifications: Teamwork Administrator, Messaging Administrator, Dynamics 365, and Data and AI are all "coming soon."

There's still a lot more to learn about the details of the new certifications, but it's pretty obvious that big changes are (and will be) afoot going into 2019.