Updated January 27, 2021
This past year has certainly been an extraordinary one, and we’ve seen the impact of technology as it transforms to meet increasing productivity and collaboration needs...
Updated Mar 31, 2022
Version 6.0
Blog Post
I've seen a lot of posts complaining about the lack of replacement for the MCSE infrastructure track.
I can give you my 2 cents. It's dead.
Microsoft for the past 3 years have been aggressively forcing the issue of moving business off of traditional on-premises solutions into the cloud. Fact. First was the exams being deprecated, then removed and not having any new version.
Then came less and less on-premises releases of products - with the added sucker punch of having to pay a subscription for patching support (SharePoint on-premises as an example).
The reality is we all know - lots of business has legacy kit, on-premises infrastructure, security restrictions, small budgets that require sweating the tin, and lack of buy-in and skills to fully adopt cloud. There's also lots of bespoke apps that won't run the cloud or will cost a fortune for the same experience.
The answer from Microsoft is - tough. Change your job then, to a company that has moved to cloud services, is in the process of doing so, or wants to and has buy-in.
Hard, hard decisions. Having busted my backside off to get the MCSE Productivity track, to be faced with essentially learn from scratch everything is painful. I also left my employer because they just didn't have the funds for full bells and whistles Azure and 365 modern services.
But we have to accept the industry is forcing this upon all of us professionals. Swim with the ocean, don't fight against it. Skill up, and move forward.