2020 is year of the changes: Microsoft Azure Certification
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 Certification | Old Exam Id | New Exam Id | Possible Release Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate | AZ-103 | AZ-104 | March, 2020 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate | AZ-203 | AZ-204 | s of February, 2020 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect | AZ-300 & AZ-301 | AZ-303 & AZ-304 | March, 2020 |
| Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate | AI-100 | AI-102 | March, 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… 😉