9 ms·

Microsoft is retiring its MCSA, MCSD and MCSE certifications

110 points by terenceng2010 7y ago

linuxftw 7y ago
I've been out of the Microsoft loop for a while (thankfully). Their new certs are confusing, it's not really clear what the person that does the "Active Directory" stuff even needs at this point. MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert. Matched industry job titles and responsibilities. "Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate" Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365." Microsoft has lost their minds with this 365 nonsense. "Administrator Associate" also sounds inferior to "Administrator". Is this an entry level certification? It used to be somewhat simple hierarchy: Administrator, Engineer, Architect in the IT world. Now it's buzzword soup everywhere.
- illnewsthat 7y ago
  >"Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate" > Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365." This part seems fairly clear to me. Teams is a product inside of the Office 365 family of products. So that certification would be for someone that wants to be an administrator for Teams. That being said, I do agree with some of your points: like "Administrator Associate" is a bit confusing. Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think. Office 365 is for the productivity apps (including Teams), and then Microsoft 365 is for Win 10 + Office 365 + Security things... could get confusing quick.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    > Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think. I just never heard "associate" used in reference to a title on anything related to informatics.
    - close04 7y ago
      Citrix also called (calls?) their first tier cert "associates". Citrix Certified Associate, going up to Profesional, and Expert.
    - chrisandchris 7y ago
      AWS also calls their 2nd level certification „Associate“ [1]. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/de/certification/ https://aws.amazon.com/de/certification/
    - sah2ed 7y ago
      What about the “associate” in the entry-level CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)?
- syshum 7y ago
  >>MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert the SA is MCSA is not System Admin, it is Solutions Associate and has been for a number of years MCSA was Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate MCSE was Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert They changed the names in the Early 2000's if I remember correctly
_Understated_ 7y ago
Looks like they're basically throwing on-prem stuff under a bus now: All the certs are for Azure-related stuff.[0] [0] - https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE4q70G https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE...
- orev 7y ago
  We have a winner! Microsoft is unabashedly trying to destroy on-prem IT. They are cutting out every reseller, and directly telling users things like “this feature that would make your life so much easier and make you look great in front of the boss has been disabled by your control-freak system admin”. And they have already tipped their hand that they intend to prevent admins from having any control at all on future things. You can’t even install Windows anymore without a Microsoft account (without jumping through ever-increasingly complex hoops).
remir 7y ago
Bold move by Microsoft. I get that the cloud is more lucrative, but I feel like this is a bit premature. Plenty of businesses aren't ready to switch to the cloud and it seems like MS and others want to push this illusion of "everybody is doing it and you should too".
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  It seems overly confident. They know the majority of business depend on their OS, AD and office suite so they can f them real hard and get away with it. So either they know really where the boundary is and calculated this well, or they already know that all this stuff will go away and accepted their fate. Or they are being really stupid here and rapidly turn themselves into just another cloud provider.
  - 2J0 7y ago
    They're turning our dens into the next generation datacenter and personally I won't be happy until our furnace is substituted for radiators that are heat sinks / backplanes for the various 1U * servers I'd like instead of overpriced home automation systems and poor entertainment hardware that is bettered by miles for much less by actual professional production gear and this is how I dream we're going to be able to heat the homes of our elderly people who not too long hence will count among their number this comment author or rather my wife and my ashes after I expire from shock at human kind managing a drinking session in a brewery. But I have hope, sure and certain hope, as my faith's liturgy inters it's believers...(I think of religion like a lost advanced technology that has become entirely misunderstood and its uses forgotten or even despised because maybe like LISP having faith in our fellow humanity is plain hard and involves too many macros. But that's the kit of my digression into that subject, I am merely so deeply worried about global events that I fear a retrograde to exactly what of theology is most abhorrent and destructive though ephemerally consoling. This race of man needs to work afresh to understand anew everything, I believe, and I already think I'm seeing the failures of modern civilisation caused by the passing of the last generation who learned the hardest way to work first towards better life for all and trust that wealth will subsequently follow, instead we're almost entirely product now of gaming the edge cases of capitalism which cases should instead be solved to enable the future to be built) (preferably the open computing rack spec or maybe something entirely different and more suitably designed. This area is ripe for patents and I'm looking for like minds to establish some prior art in anticipation of bad actors especially the mostly unprofitable energy utilities, and I've legal and development budget carved out of my savings to do so on my hunch I can reasonably ask to be made whole if the product is useful) * slightly involved investigation showed me I can assemble the most excellent home theater system from pro equipment for plenty less than close to the higher end of consumer systems, while giving my family the facility almost every way equal to a professional post production studio. This isn't Lutron. Lutron don't sell DANTE routing/ volume controls and switching with display to fit into our light switch soffets. But Teac do for a modest sum. DANTE is the most advanced pro audio live audio interface over Ethernet so we'll be able to connect our daughters keyboard music workstation to the DAC in our den, which can record 32 channels of 5Mhz sample sound to SD card, or have a computer patched in by a inexpensive Yamaha PCIe (v4!) card capable of incredible wonders and software process for Dolby and Auro3D (a lesser known but arguably far better surround format originally adopted by Skywalker and big studios and now part of the IMAX 8K spec. This is software processing and we can record as easily as play. We aimed to beat a dealerships quote for a "safely not high end but show off what's possible today not tomorrow please " setup and managed by a pleasant amount. .... all I have written looks like prime Azure/IoT candidate income sources to my vision of the not distant future. Of course Microsoft is bold. How can you be anything but hold at trillion dollars scales? How can you move the needle unless you're playing with a big stack? I amuse myself with thoughts about splitting Microsoft's businesses now and separating cloud from on premises lines. This makes sense to me as a business decision that would help the company to thrive whilst enabling the less connected economic world to access software systems that aren't subsidies for the cloud computing competition. I think Azure is a better standalone business than integrated. This may require a long term investment from shareholders. But our 401ks need genuine growth stocks. The legacy business will serve the world being served by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation today. That's a sympathy for the good in every way possible that I've thought about it. I would separate the IP and patent portfolio into a trust in recognition of Microsoft business in the OSS world which needs assurance and support but by separating the on premise Microsoft from Azure, the on prem Microsoft can now compete with open source alternatives. Equally this is the open source movements greatest opportunity for all time. Who cares about the Year Of Desktop Linux if Microsoft is abandoning the desktop? We won already. So did Microsoft. Pooh, capitalism is about growing pies for real? Hand me my defibrillator!
AdrianB1 7y ago
I got my MCSE exactly 20 years ago; it had a different meaning at that time, S was for System, not Solution. Today the company I work for has close to 100,000 computers in Active Directory and no plan to change that: most of these computers are personal laptops and desktops, there is no move to cloud for these. I have no idea what training and certification the new hires working in the AD and Personal Computing teams will have to pursue, I will have to check but it is definitely not a change in favor of simplicity.
- syshum 7y ago
  >> most of these computers are personal laptops and desktops, there is no move to cloud for these While the OS will not move, Microsoft wants you to move to Azure AD and Intune for Management instead of OnPrem AD and Group Policy They want that monthly per device revenue, and I would not be shocked to see EA CAL and Core CAL prices increased very soon to be more than the Equivalent Cloud Product. I think past 2019 Versions of Server Products it is about to become VERY VERY expensive for companies to Continue with OnPrem Microsoft products. better start looking at Directory389 and and FreeIPA.. Edit: Since I am rated limited (posting too many controversial things) I will edit my post to say MS has been signalling well since Ballmer left that Onprem is deprecated and will be a second class citizen in their Line Up This is just further moving down the path of eliminating all OnPrem for Azure, 5-10 years I would say MAX before they end all support for the Server Side of OnPrem, or it will become Azure Stack and the only way to use Windows Services is with a Hybrid Azure, so your OnPrem AD will be a Cached version of AzureAD
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    Azure AD may be a decent solution if you have people doing Office and other work all day long, not when you have manufacturing plants across the world in places with poor Internet connections, SCADA and continuity plans that don't involve reliable Internet. If you need that, the complexity of having on premise AD and Azure AD is just cost with no benefits.
    - jedieaston 7y ago
webwanderings 7y ago
MCSE was good, back in the days, prior to the proliferation of Internet and virtualization technologies. It taught fundamental networking and bare server under the hood. Not sure what new learners learn these days amid all the virtual abstractions, etc.
jasoneckert 7y ago
As an IT college teacher for 21 years, I can tell you that educational institutions are very angry about this change. We often have courses that map to Microsoft certificaion. Students write them, and employers want them. They are a general benchmark that allows organizations to narrow the list of candidates they interview for a job related to one or more technologies. Most college grads get jobs in small-to-medium organizations where Azure is not a common requirement. Moreover, many small organizations that moved their stuff to Azure at the request of an MSP are current moving it back on premises to save cost now that they realize it's much cheaper to do so. Together with Microsoft's abrupt replacement of the Win10 certifications last year (they gave no notice to colleges or publishers), it looks like the trust colleges have placed in the Microsoft certification program is disappearing fast.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  I do think this is for the best. Education, whether traditional or applies technical, shouldn't be locked to a single vendor. This may make hiring harder, but other certifications will arise, and in the mean time qualified but uncertified applicants might have a better chance at getting employed.
  - syshum 7y ago
    That depends, there is absolute a place for Vendor Certifications. There should also be general and non-vendor certifications. I dont believe MS doing away with all OnPrem Certifications is "for the best"
  - jasoneckert 7y ago
    Nearly all colleges are not locked to a single vendor - CompTIA, Cisco, EC-Counsil, LPI, Red Hat, etc. are taught equally. The point I was hoping to convey earlier was that Microsoft is now going to disappear from that vendor and organization list.
    - tarellel 7y ago
      I beg to differ, I went to a community college and everything was locked in to Microsoft; certs, software, and MS approved coiurse guidelines (MS had given them some sizable grants to push the students to leave and use their products. I know work for our states biggest university and it’s still the same way. Literally out of thousands of employees our small group in IT are the only ones using macs and building/deploying products in a Linux environment. Being in the position I’m in allows me to get a look at the other Colleges/Universities across the state and it’s pretty much the same process across the board. A fair enough chunk of CS students coming in are disappointed about the M$ based CS tracks. They came in expecting to learn Linux, Python, Ruby, JS, Docker, and k8s. I’m hoping in the future in the CS guidelines will diversify and let people choose either a OSS/programming, MS, and Cisco/Networking tracks to be a little more open to real world needs.
TrumpMyGuns 7y ago
Will this affect my ability to receive useless answers on their community run support forum?
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  The community answers are not really their fault, I think the moderators are not meant to be a higher level of support when the community answers suck. The useful answers are from their paid support like in many other cases, for everything else there is Stackoverflow.
js4ever 7y ago
I feel like it's not only certs that are retiring, most MS dev/sysadmin I know (myself included as MCSA) have moved to linux stacks in the past 3 years
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  There is an ever increasing number of Linux servers, that is correct, but there is still a huge base of personal PC's (laptops, desktops) running Windows in Active Directory in many companies; there is still specialized software that runs only on Windows even on servers - I know in the area I work the top options are Windows only - so there is still need for Windows admins.
syshum 7y ago
People should make their Opinions heard, https://trainingsupport.microsoft.com/en-us/mcp/forum/all/petition-to-delay-the-mcsa-deadline/4e080e20-a7b4-4cf0-a557-329d800f84a6 https://trainingsupport.microsoft.com/en-us/mcp/forum/all/pe... Probably will not do anything but...
saber6 7y ago
Certs are dated in most cases. I let my CCIE lapse last year because it simply doesn't have the differentiating value that it once did.
jeroen 7y ago
Source, with a list of the more than 40 exams that will be retired: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/community-blog-post.aspx?BlogId=8&Id=375282 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/community-blog-post...
bunsenhoneydew 7y ago
Good. I spent about 15 years hiring and managing MS devs and these certs were always a red flag to me. It almost guaranteed the person would only know the MS exam way and would have no critical thinking capabilities. They also rarely knew anything beyond the MS world. They were a very strong indicator of someone’s ability to pass an exam, not that they were a good engineer. From talking to other disciplines, the networking and infra certs were useful but everything I saw about dev certs was negative. I guess they were useful in helping thin down a pile of CVs as these went straight to the bottom.
- mathattack 7y ago
  In general I’ve viewed any 3 or 4 letter acronym (MSCA, MBA, CISA, PMP, etc) to be a bad signal. It’s as if they’re signaling a lack of depth.
- thanatropism 7y ago
  And now you’ve lost a bunch of red flags you were able to use for recruitment.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  I've heard that reasoning of certs under different IT disciplines from different managers as well. To me, the fact that you think that way is a redflag that you don't do technical interviews right and perhaps you haven't managed to train people right either. The cert only tells you that they know the $cert way of doing things and that in itself shows minimal competency as opposed to someone making things up. A cert says nothing about other abilities such as critical thinking and abstract reasoning. It only helps you decide whether or not you should call them in for an interview. Your technical interview should include practical questions that filter out candidates that can't be bothered to research a subject and stick to the cert way no matter what.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Yep, GP rant is middle-brow dismissal.
andrewveitch 7y ago
MCSE = Mentally Challenged Systems Engineer
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
LOL. Finally! I had that MCSE thing for Windows NT4/Networking and IIS. What an utter waste of time. I had to actively ignore most of what i knew already to pass the braindead questionairies. It wasn't all BS, especially in networking, but mostly...? Anyways, it smelled scammy, it empowered scammy tutors to scam scammy institutions to scam scammy people to scam employers into employing them. A whole market of scammers. That is why i cut the card in two and BURNED it in public at the end :-) (Don't panic, there was an ashtray...)
garganzol 7y ago
Microsoft is a pale shade of its former self. Many argue that Ballmer departure was a good thing™. But I am sure it was the tipping point for a progressing irrelevancy. The situation is unlikely to change any time soon. Microsoft is bloodless and dying. Azure brings them cool money now, but that's a temporary thing. Fast forward some years and they will degenerate into a hosting company. Why? Because software is the king. The cost of software distribution is negligible, and hardware is commodity. How? Imagine Kubernetes + Digital Ocean combo. Are they a big threat to Azure? Not at all. Digital Ocean is sweet and beloved, but Kubernetes is hard and clunky. Now imagine a piece of software that eliminates all deficiencies. Let's call it The Killer. Now we have The Killer + Digital Ocean combo vs Azure. And not only Digital Ocean participates, take any other VPS or cloud-rental company. Take any other computer in the world. Azure the Goliath will be defeated by millions of Davids in a blink of an eye. Microsoft the company is going to face a harsh reality. And given the direction it follows today, it will have negligible chances of survival by then.
altmind 7y ago
What are the options to have windows domain controller? We got some 20-30 windows7 and 10 pcs and need to centrally manage them - with profile roaming, with SMB ACL, and Administrative policies. With this strong push towards Azure, there is still no replacement for AD, neither samba reached the point of being a primary controller replacement. Are active directory domain services supposed to be an alternative? It seems to me they only provide ldaps and able to login on windows, but no trusts and nothing to enable sharing ACLs. So for a new deployment, with ample time to learn the options, I still have to setup some redundant windows servers, with AD and trusts, the old way.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  If you're already using Azure, then Azure AD might be an option to look into if you're not wanting to run your own Domain Controllers. Otherwise, you can continue running them just as you've been able to for the last 20 years. Retiring these certifications has exactly zero to do with any Active Directory or Domain Controller functionality. (To me, yours seems a bit of an odd question, so I apologize if I'm maybe missing something in your question.)
mixmastamyk 7y ago
I do wish there was a ‘skip tech interviews’ cert that was taken seriously.

110 points by terenceng2010 7y ago

I've been out of the Microsoft loop for a while (thankfully). Their new certs are confusing, it's not really clear what the person that does the "Active Directory" stuff even needs at this point. MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert. Matched industry job titles and responsibilities. "Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate" Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365." Microsoft has lost their minds with this 365 nonsense. "Administrator Associate" also sounds inferior to "Administrator". Is this an entry level certification? It used to be somewhat simple hierarchy: Administrator, Engineer, Architect in the IT world. Now it's buzzword soup everywhere.

illnewsthat 7y ago
>"Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate" > Does that have to do with Microsoft Teams? The description talks about "Office 365." This part seems fairly clear to me. Teams is a product inside of the Office 365 family of products. So that certification would be for someone that wants to be an administrator for Teams. That being said, I do agree with some of your points: like "Administrator Associate" is a bit confusing. Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think. Office 365 is for the productivity apps (including Teams), and then Microsoft 365 is for Win 10 + Office 365 + Security things... could get confusing quick.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > Administrators are typically farther along than associates I would think. I just never heard "associate" used in reference to a title on anything related to informatics.
  - close04 7y ago
    Citrix also called (calls?) their first tier cert "associates". Citrix Certified Associate, going up to Profesional, and Expert.
  - chrisandchris 7y ago
    AWS also calls their 2nd level certification „Associate“ [1]. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/de/certification/ https://aws.amazon.com/de/certification/
  - sah2ed 7y ago
    What about the “associate” in the entry-level CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)?
syshum 7y ago
>>MCSA was pretty straight forward, not really much marketing fluff. "System Admin" right in the name of the cert the SA is MCSA is not System Admin, it is Solutions Associate and has been for a number of years MCSA was Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate MCSE was Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert They changed the names in the Early 2000's if I remember correctly

_Understated_ 7y ago

Looks like they're basically throwing on-prem stuff under a bus now: All the certs are for Azure-related stuff.[0] [0] - https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE4q70G https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE...

orev 7y ago
We have a winner! Microsoft is unabashedly trying to destroy on-prem IT. They are cutting out every reseller, and directly telling users things like “this feature that would make your life so much easier and make you look great in front of the boss has been disabled by your control-freak system admin”. And they have already tipped their hand that they intend to prevent admins from having any control at all on future things. You can’t even install Windows anymore without a Microsoft account (without jumping through ever-increasingly complex hoops).

remir 7y ago

Bold move by Microsoft. I get that the cloud is more lucrative, but I feel like this is a bit premature. Plenty of businesses aren't ready to switch to the cloud and it seems like MS and others want to push this illusion of "everybody is doing it and you should too".

iforgotpassword 7y ago
It seems overly confident. They know the majority of business depend on their OS, AD and office suite so they can f them real hard and get away with it. So either they know really where the boundary is and calculated this well, or they already know that all this stuff will go away and accepted their fate. Or they are being really stupid here and rapidly turn themselves into just another cloud provider.
- 2J0 7y ago
  They're turning our dens into the next generation datacenter and personally I won't be happy until our furnace is substituted for radiators that are heat sinks / backplanes for the various 1U * servers I'd like instead of overpriced home automation systems and poor entertainment hardware that is bettered by miles for much less by actual professional production gear and this is how I dream we're going to be able to heat the homes of our elderly people who not too long hence will count among their number this comment author or rather my wife and my ashes after I expire from shock at human kind managing a drinking session in a brewery. But I have hope, sure and certain hope, as my faith's liturgy inters it's believers...(I think of religion like a lost advanced technology that has become entirely misunderstood and its uses forgotten or even despised because maybe like LISP having faith in our fellow humanity is plain hard and involves too many macros. But that's the kit of my digression into that subject, I am merely so deeply worried about global events that I fear a retrograde to exactly what of theology is most abhorrent and destructive though ephemerally consoling. This race of man needs to work afresh to understand anew everything, I believe, and I already think I'm seeing the failures of modern civilisation caused by the passing of the last generation who learned the hardest way to work first towards better life for all and trust that wealth will subsequently follow, instead we're almost entirely product now of gaming the edge cases of capitalism which cases should instead be solved to enable the future to be built) (preferably the open computing rack spec or maybe something entirely different and more suitably designed. This area is ripe for patents and I'm looking for like minds to establish some prior art in anticipation of bad actors especially the mostly unprofitable energy utilities, and I've legal and development budget carved out of my savings to do so on my hunch I can reasonably ask to be made whole if the product is useful) * slightly involved investigation showed me I can assemble the most excellent home theater system from pro equipment for plenty less than close to the higher end of consumer systems, while giving my family the facility almost every way equal to a professional post production studio. This isn't Lutron. Lutron don't sell DANTE routing/ volume controls and switching with display to fit into our light switch soffets. But Teac do for a modest sum. DANTE is the most advanced pro audio live audio interface over Ethernet so we'll be able to connect our daughters keyboard music workstation to the DAC in our den, which can record 32 channels of 5Mhz sample sound to SD card, or have a computer patched in by a inexpensive Yamaha PCIe (v4!) card capable of incredible wonders and software process for Dolby and Auro3D (a lesser known but arguably far better surround format originally adopted by Skywalker and big studios and now part of the IMAX 8K spec. This is software processing and we can record as easily as play. We aimed to beat a dealerships quote for a "safely not high end but show off what's possible today not tomorrow please " setup and managed by a pleasant amount. .... all I have written looks like prime Azure/IoT candidate income sources to my vision of the not distant future. Of course Microsoft is bold. How can you be anything but hold at trillion dollars scales? How can you move the needle unless you're playing with a big stack? I amuse myself with thoughts about splitting Microsoft's businesses now and separating cloud from on premises lines. This makes sense to me as a business decision that would help the company to thrive whilst enabling the less connected economic world to access software systems that aren't subsidies for the cloud computing competition. I think Azure is a better standalone business than integrated. This may require a long term investment from shareholders. But our 401ks need genuine growth stocks. The legacy business will serve the world being served by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation today. That's a sympathy for the good in every way possible that I've thought about it. I would separate the IP and patent portfolio into a trust in recognition of Microsoft business in the OSS world which needs assurance and support but by separating the on premise Microsoft from Azure, the on prem Microsoft can now compete with open source alternatives. Equally this is the open source movements greatest opportunity for all time. Who cares about the Year Of Desktop Linux if Microsoft is abandoning the desktop? We won already. So did Microsoft. Pooh, capitalism is about growing pies for real? Hand me my defibrillator!

AdrianB1 7y ago

I got my MCSE exactly 20 years ago; it had a different meaning at that time, S was for System, not Solution. Today the company I work for has close to 100,000 computers in Active Directory and no plan to change that: most of these computers are personal laptops and desktops, there is no move to cloud for these. I have no idea what training and certification the new hires working in the AD and Personal Computing teams will have to pursue, I will have to check but it is definitely not a change in favor of simplicity.

syshum 7y ago
>> most of these computers are personal laptops and desktops, there is no move to cloud for these While the OS will not move, Microsoft wants you to move to Azure AD and Intune for Management instead of OnPrem AD and Group Policy They want that monthly per device revenue, and I would not be shocked to see EA CAL and Core CAL prices increased very soon to be more than the Equivalent Cloud Product. I think past 2019 Versions of Server Products it is about to become VERY VERY expensive for companies to Continue with OnPrem Microsoft products. better start looking at Directory389 and and FreeIPA.. Edit: Since I am rated limited (posting too many controversial things) I will edit my post to say MS has been signalling well since Ballmer left that Onprem is deprecated and will be a second class citizen in their Line Up This is just further moving down the path of eliminating all OnPrem for Azure, 5-10 years I would say MAX before they end all support for the Server Side of OnPrem, or it will become Azure Stack and the only way to use Windows Services is with a Hybrid Azure, so your OnPrem AD will be a Cached version of AzureAD
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Azure AD may be a decent solution if you have people doing Office and other work all day long, not when you have manufacturing plants across the world in places with poor Internet connections, SCADA and continuity plans that don't involve reliable Internet. If you need that, the complexity of having on premise AD and Azure AD is just cost with no benefits.
  - jedieaston 7y ago

webwanderings 7y ago

MCSE was good, back in the days, prior to the proliferation of Internet and virtualization technologies. It taught fundamental networking and bare server under the hood. Not sure what new learners learn these days amid all the virtual abstractions, etc.

jasoneckert 7y ago

As an IT college teacher for 21 years, I can tell you that educational institutions are very angry about this change. We often have courses that map to Microsoft certificaion. Students write them, and employers want them. They are a general benchmark that allows organizations to narrow the list of candidates they interview for a job related to one or more technologies. Most college grads get jobs in small-to-medium organizations where Azure is not a common requirement. Moreover, many small organizations that moved their stuff to Azure at the request of an MSP are current moving it back on premises to save cost now that they realize it's much cheaper to do so. Together with Microsoft's abrupt replacement of the Win10 certifications last year (they gave no notice to colleges or publishers), it looks like the trust colleges have placed in the Microsoft certification program is disappearing fast.

nitrogen 7y ago
I do think this is for the best. Education, whether traditional or applies technical, shouldn't be locked to a single vendor. This may make hiring harder, but other certifications will arise, and in the mean time qualified but uncertified applicants might have a better chance at getting employed.
- syshum 7y ago
  That depends, there is absolute a place for Vendor Certifications. There should also be general and non-vendor certifications. I dont believe MS doing away with all OnPrem Certifications is "for the best"
- jasoneckert 7y ago
  Nearly all colleges are not locked to a single vendor - CompTIA, Cisco, EC-Counsil, LPI, Red Hat, etc. are taught equally. The point I was hoping to convey earlier was that Microsoft is now going to disappear from that vendor and organization list.
  - tarellel 7y ago
    I beg to differ, I went to a community college and everything was locked in to Microsoft; certs, software, and MS approved coiurse guidelines (MS had given them some sizable grants to push the students to leave and use their products. I know work for our states biggest university and it’s still the same way. Literally out of thousands of employees our small group in IT are the only ones using macs and building/deploying products in a Linux environment. Being in the position I’m in allows me to get a look at the other Colleges/Universities across the state and it’s pretty much the same process across the board. A fair enough chunk of CS students coming in are disappointed about the M$ based CS tracks. They came in expecting to learn Linux, Python, Ruby, JS, Docker, and k8s. I’m hoping in the future in the CS guidelines will diversify and let people choose either a OSS/programming, MS, and Cisco/Networking tracks to be a little more open to real world needs.

TrumpMyGuns 7y ago

Will this affect my ability to receive useless answers on their community run support forum?

AdrianB1 7y ago
The community answers are not really their fault, I think the moderators are not meant to be a higher level of support when the community answers suck. The useful answers are from their paid support like in many other cases, for everything else there is Stackoverflow.

js4ever 7y ago

I feel like it's not only certs that are retiring, most MS dev/sysadmin I know (myself included as MCSA) have moved to linux stacks in the past 3 years

AdrianB1 7y ago
There is an ever increasing number of Linux servers, that is correct, but there is still a huge base of personal PC's (laptops, desktops) running Windows in Active Directory in many companies; there is still specialized software that runs only on Windows even on servers - I know in the area I work the top options are Windows only - so there is still need for Windows admins.

syshum 7y ago

People should make their Opinions heard, https://trainingsupport.microsoft.com/en-us/mcp/forum/all/petition-to-delay-the-mcsa-deadline/4e080e20-a7b4-4cf0-a557-329d800f84a6 https://trainingsupport.microsoft.com/en-us/mcp/forum/all/pe... Probably will not do anything but...

saber6 7y ago

Certs are dated in most cases. I let my CCIE lapse last year because it simply doesn't have the differentiating value that it once did.

jeroen 7y ago

Source, with a list of the more than 40 exams that will be retired: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/community-blog-post.aspx?BlogId=8&Id=375282 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/community-blog-post...

bunsenhoneydew 7y ago

Good. I spent about 15 years hiring and managing MS devs and these certs were always a red flag to me. It almost guaranteed the person would only know the MS exam way and would have no critical thinking capabilities. They also rarely knew anything beyond the MS world. They were a very strong indicator of someone’s ability to pass an exam, not that they were a good engineer. From talking to other disciplines, the networking and infra certs were useful but everything I saw about dev certs was negative. I guess they were useful in helping thin down a pile of CVs as these went straight to the bottom.

mathattack 7y ago
In general I’ve viewed any 3 or 4 letter acronym (MSCA, MBA, CISA, PMP, etc) to be a bad signal. It’s as if they’re signaling a lack of depth.
thanatropism 7y ago
And now you’ve lost a bunch of red flags you were able to use for recruitment.
badrabbit 7y ago
I've heard that reasoning of certs under different IT disciplines from different managers as well. To me, the fact that you think that way is a redflag that you don't do technical interviews right and perhaps you haven't managed to train people right either. The cert only tells you that they know the $cert way of doing things and that in itself shows minimal competency as opposed to someone making things up. A cert says nothing about other abilities such as critical thinking and abstract reasoning. It only helps you decide whether or not you should call them in for an interview. Your technical interview should include practical questions that filter out candidates that can't be bothered to research a subject and stick to the cert way no matter what.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Yep, GP rant is middle-brow dismissal.

andrewveitch 7y ago

MCSE = Mentally Challenged Systems Engineer

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

LOL. Finally! I had that MCSE thing for Windows NT4/Networking and IIS. What an utter waste of time. I had to actively ignore most of what i knew already to pass the braindead questionairies. It wasn't all BS, especially in networking, but mostly...? Anyways, it smelled scammy, it empowered scammy tutors to scam scammy institutions to scam scammy people to scam employers into employing them. A whole market of scammers. That is why i cut the card in two and BURNED it in public at the end :-) (Don't panic, there was an ashtray...)

garganzol 7y ago

Microsoft is a pale shade of its former self. Many argue that Ballmer departure was a good thing™. But I am sure it was the tipping point for a progressing irrelevancy. The situation is unlikely to change any time soon. Microsoft is bloodless and dying. Azure brings them cool money now, but that's a temporary thing. Fast forward some years and they will degenerate into a hosting company. Why? Because software is the king. The cost of software distribution is negligible, and hardware is commodity. How? Imagine Kubernetes + Digital Ocean combo. Are they a big threat to Azure? Not at all. Digital Ocean is sweet and beloved, but Kubernetes is hard and clunky. Now imagine a piece of software that eliminates all deficiencies. Let's call it The Killer. Now we have The Killer + Digital Ocean combo vs Azure. And not only Digital Ocean participates, take any other VPS or cloud-rental company. Take any other computer in the world. Azure the Goliath will be defeated by millions of Davids in a blink of an eye. Microsoft the company is going to face a harsh reality. And given the direction it follows today, it will have negligible chances of survival by then.

altmind 7y ago

What are the options to have windows domain controller? We got some 20-30 windows7 and 10 pcs and need to centrally manage them - with profile roaming, with SMB ACL, and Administrative policies. With this strong push towards Azure, there is still no replacement for AD, neither samba reached the point of being a primary controller replacement. Are active directory domain services supposed to be an alternative? It seems to me they only provide ldaps and able to login on windows, but no trusts and nothing to enable sharing ACLs. So for a new deployment, with ample time to learn the options, I still have to setup some redundant windows servers, with AD and trusts, the old way.

jlgaddis 7y ago
If you're already using Azure, then Azure AD might be an option to look into if you're not wanting to run your own Domain Controllers. Otherwise, you can continue running them just as you've been able to for the last 20 years. Retiring these certifications has exactly zero to do with any Active Directory or Domain Controller functionality. (To me, yours seems a bit of an odd question, so I apologize if I'm maybe missing something in your question.)

mixmastamyk 7y ago

I do wish there was a ‘skip tech interviews’ cert that was taken seriously.