The renewal of Microsoft certifications for the next year was on the air from
a lot of time but official news were not be publicly available, but
finally this morning is appeared the first official news directly from the
Microsoft
Certified Professional Magazine Online.
- Tier 1: Microsoft Certified Technology
Specialist will require simply passing one to three exams based
on a Microsoft technology. As products meet the end of the support lifecycle,
its related exam will be retired.
- Tier 2: Microsoft Certified IT Professional
or Professional Developer require a Technology
Specialist certification, plus one to three more exams, based on the
requirement for a particular path. This tier is tied to job role at an
organization, such as Database Developer or Business Intelligence.
Recertification will be required to maintain status at this level.
- Tier 3: Microsoft Certified Architect is a
rigorous, board-level certification that requires recertification. Achieving
Technology Specialist or IT Professional or Professional Developer
certification not a prerequisite to attaining this level of
certification.
You can find more details directly on the article, but in summary the new
certifications level will be focused on making easier to identify the specific
skills that an individual is capable of deploying and the type of job role that
individual can fulfill (IT Professional or Professional Developer).
These new certifications will be composed of a credential and some
skill-identifying certifications, so at the first tier in the new
plan, candidates might achieve several versions of Microsoft Certified
Technology Specialist to highlight as many skills as possible. So, now
we'll have not a generic MCP title but a more specific Microsoft Certified
Technology Specialist title with the specific skills connected (the skills will
be listed to the right of the Technology Specialist
logo).
All these news seems really interesting because I think that with this new
model a certification reflects better what an individual is able to do and in
what fields it's an expert.
Now I hope a new step on certifications renewal: unification of Microsoft
Business Solutions certification with the standard certifications step
above. We'll see what happens.