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We got some time from Microsoft

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Maybe you remember I published an article about the future of Microsoft certification. As you read: 2020 is year of the changes: Microsoft Azure Certification. Accordingly everyone started to reorganize their plans regarding the trainings and exams for this year.

Then last week Microsoft announced several significant changes which affect everything we planned since beginning of February.

I can see tons of question marks in your mind. Is it good news? Is it bad news? Let me quote something:

Ah, Shifu, there is just news. There is no good or bad.

Oogway (Kung Fu Panda)

So, don’t worry…Microsoft announced the following thins:

  • Testing centers closing and online proctoring capacity increasing
  • Reschedule and cancellation fees waived
  • Retirement of MCSA, MCSD, MCSE certifications and related exams extended
  • Expiring role-based certifications extended
  • Exam voucher and discount offer expiration dates extended
  • Moving to virtual training

In nutshell: Microsoft increases its online exams related capacity which is really good news. Additionally if you have any expiring certification, voucher or discount offer, it will be extended until January 31, 2021. Finally, all MCSE, MCSA, MCSD certification retirement date is postponed to January 31, 2021.

For the details, you can read the whole article here: An Important Update on Microsoft Training and Certification

Luckily, last week I provided a post to you about the possibilities of Azure Online Exams. According our current information, Microsoft has enough capacity to manage our ambitions regarding online exams.

So Let’s go back and start to plan our career path again. 😉

mscertchanges2020q1

2020 is year of the changes: Microsoft Azure Certification

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About a year ago the Microsoft made sweeping changes regarding certifications. Accordingly we had to learn the role-based certifications.

This was useful from that point of view this was a harmonization step with other players on market like AWS. Nevertheless this caused some confusions in ours mind, because we almost lost our well known MCP-MCSA-MCSE progress. In other hand the Microsoft brought a bright new world which is better-to-understand for beginners and professionals whose are new in the “Microsoft world”. Finally we are in a better situation because if you are a DevOps engineer you don’t have any headache anymore to choose the best-fit certification path for your career.

And in 2020 – as usual – there are some newer changes around Microsoft Azure Certifications. Why? Maybe Microsoft realized the there are some not well defined certifications or merely to prepare the newer certifications in our continuously-changing IT world. I guess both could be true. 🙂

There won’t be significant changes yet. More or less the exam number will change. The changes is going to be applied in this February and March.

You can find the related changes here (source: Build5Nines.com):

Name of CertificationOld Exam IdNew Exam IdPossible Release Date
Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator AssociateAZ-103AZ-104March, 2020
Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate AZ-203AZ-204s of February, 2020
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect AZ-300 & AZ-301AZ-303 & AZ-304March, 2020
Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate AI-100AI-102March, 2020

Regarding the retirement of old exams the Microsoft says:

We will be publishing the updated exams in the next few months, but we will leave the old exam in market for 90 days after the new version becomes available.

Another important information for you: the Certification name itself won’t be changed. “Merely” you need to take the new exam(s) to earn the Certification.

Original announcement from Microsoft is available on Microsoft Learning Blog.

If you have any further question please do not hesitate to contact me.
And now let’s go back to preparation for the exams… 😉