Print | posted on Monday, October 03, 2011 7:37 PM
This morning at the sold out SharePoint Conference 2011 we officially announced the new premier certification for SharePoint practitioners, the Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) for SharePoint Server 2010.
During his keynote address, Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President of the SharePoint Product Group discussed the key role the SharePoint eco system has and will continue to play in the run away success of Microsoft’s platform without peers in the marketplace. The MCA program helps the highest-achieving IT architecture professionals distinguish their expertise with Microsoft server technologies, including SharePoint solutions for enterprise customers. MCA will recognise the best of the best in the architecture field and engaging an MCA will help guarantee success with your SharePoint initiatives, on premise, in the cloud or a combination of both.
This new certification is intended to recognize and validate the expertise of the highest-achieving SharePoint architects. The MCA Program administers a unique, rigorous review board and case exam process to help enable the most experienced IT professionals in IT architecture to distinguish their expertise in architecting complex solutions using Microsoft server technologies. Designed specifically for seasoned, practicing SharePoint architects, this new MCA certification validates both the technical and leadership skills of those who deliver SharePoint solutions for enterprise customers.
Dovetailing with today’s announcement, Microsoft have also introduced the revised and restructured review board process, which applies across all of the MCA certifications. The goal of this redesign was to reinforce the distinction between the value delivered by technology-specific architect certifications and technology-agnostic certifications.
It is a great honour to be along with my good friend for many years, Kimmo Forss one of the “inaugural” SharePoint MCAs and we look forward to many more over the coming months.
I’ve already received a bunch of questions on the new certification, and will be posting a summary Q&A after the conference later this week. I will however mention here and now that yes, the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) is a pre-requisite for MCA. MCM is our top tier *technical* certification for SharePoint. In our view you cannot be a real architect if you don’t have the technical chops. You can find out more details over on the MCA site.
During the conference I will be loitering around the SharePoint Readiness booth in the Microsoft Product Pavilion after my breakout sessions to take any questions you may have on either MCM or MCA.
Have a great conference, and don’t forget Every Vote Counts – Please help decide how to divide our $50,000 donation between NetHope’s member humanitarian organizations by voting using the SharePoint Conference web site.
s.