Microsoft has scheduled a one-hour overview on Wednesday, February 15 at 9AM Pacific to brief interested parties in the training that leads to Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) accreditation in Exchange 2010. You can view details about the briefing and register on Microsoft’s web site.
In November 2011, I wrote about the economics involved in committing yourself to the three-week intense training that leads to MCM accreditation. If you can raise the finance or justify the expense to your management, there’s no doubt that this training will lead to a sharp increase in your knowledge of Exchange 2010 and potentially, if you succeed in the demanding exams, to membership of an exclusive group who have a tight connection with the development group. Although there were some complaints about the stress that trainees were put under in early iterations of MCM training, more recent reaction seems to be very positive, albeit with the caveat that you very much have to prepare properly to be able to deal with the information fire hose, extended hours, homework, and exams.
I understand that Microsoft has reviewed the material covered in MCM and now include more Office 365 content, especially in the area of interoperability. I think that this is wise because on-premises/cloud hybrid configurations are likely to become very common in the medium to large enterprise space over the next few years. It also reflects the engineering direction for Exchange with more work currently being done to support Office 365 than the on-premises variant.
This overview should be very interesting if you’ve been thinking about going for MCM accreditation. The more knowledge you have, the better a decision you’ll make – and the better a case you’ll be able to construct to bring to management to secure those all-important budget dollars to fund three weeks in sunny (or snowy, but more likely rainy) Redmond.
Update February 2: The available slots for the event were quickly subscribed. Fortunately the speaker, David Bjurman-Birr, was able to increase the number of available slots to 150. Slots are still available as I write, so please try again if you want to attend the event and were disappointed when you found that it was full.
