This past Thursday, Microsoft announced upcoming changes to their certification program. Notably, the program is being revamped and the previous certifications — MCSE, MCSA, and MCSD are being retired as of June 30, 2020.
This isn’t the first time MCSE and MCSA have been retired. Prior to 2012, these existed as Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, to be retired and replaced with new tracks of similar names — Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA).
I find two things interesting with this revamp. First of all, the replacements that have been announced appear to be wholly new, not leaning on the MCSE and MCSA names of old (last time when they tried to drop the MCSE and MCSA names, they quickly brought them back.) Secondly — and more importantly in my opinion (at least in the Data Management and Analytics track), is the lack of on-premise skills mentioned in the new objectives.
The names of the new certifications in the MCSE Data Management and Analytics track all end in “Associate.” (Kinda sounds like MCSA to me even if they aren’t saying it) The MCSE Productivity track does make mention of an “Expert” level so this makes me curious if at some point Microsoft will add a second tier to some or all of the new certifications in the Data Management and Analytics track? (New new MCSE anyone?) Or will that one Expert certification be the exception?
Looking at the objectives for the new “Data Analyst Associate” and “Azure Data Engineer Associate” it looks like Power BI is covered very thoroughly by the “Data Analyst Associate” certification and most of the other new BI tools — Azure Data Factory, Data Lake, Databricks, Synapse Analytics, etc. are all covered by the “Azure Data Engineer Associate”
If you read through the objectives, you’ll notice that what isn’t mentioned anywhere are the on-prem technologies which used to be the bread and butter of the MCSE Data Analytics and Management track — SSRS, SSIS, SSAS Multidimensional (good riddance!), and SSAS Tabular (other than what is in Power BI). Microsoft stated that they will not have Windows Server 2019 or SQL Server 2019 exams:
Q: If Microsoft is focused on role-based certifications, what will happen to Windows Server and SQL Server certifications? Will there be Windows Server 2019 and SQL Server 2019 certifications available?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/community-blog-post.aspx?BlogId=8&Id=375282
A: No, there will not be Windows Server 2019 and SQL Server 2019 certifications. Windows Server 2019 and SQL Server 2019 content will be included in role-based certifications on an as-needed basis for certain job roles in the Azure Apps & Infrastructure and Data & AI solution areas.
I’m not sure what this means for the future of the on-prem products themselves — obviously cloud is the way forward, but they’re not going away any time soon. We’ll see if any of the on-prem pieces of SQL Server 2019 (and later) make it into the new certification tracks, but my guess is probably not. This looks to me like an effort to direct those who are just getting started away from on-prem and toward the cloud.
I’m most excited about the new “Data Analyst Associate” certification. It requires one exam, the brand new DA-100 “Analyzing Data with Microsoft Power BI,” which looks to me to be a replacement for the one existing Power BI exam, 70-778 “Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power BI.” I was already in the process of studying for the 70-778 exam, so if it works out that I can take the new one instead (especially as a beta) then all the better! If they announce a public beta of the exam, then I’d expect them to do so on the Microsoft Learn blog prior to April 2nd, so keep an eye out!
