Please watch your inbox for an invite to hear Darmadi Komo and Luis Daniel Soto Maldonado present the SQL Server Roadmap. This event will occur next week. I am working on finalizing the time. You must have an active NDA in place in order to attend. You may not Tweet, blog, Facebook, PIntrest etc...

In coordination with the SQL Server Product Group and the Data Platform Group I am pleased to announce that we will be providing access to the Data Platform Advisors Yammer group to all SQL Server MCMs and MCAs. Ok, what does that mean to me? The Data Platform Advisors is a Yammer Group that connects...

SharePoint MCMs and MVPs will be fielding questions during the monthly SharePoint MVP expert chat on MSDN next week. You can join us on Wednesday, October 27th between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM PDT ! Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page: http://msdn.microsoft...

I was recently asked by a potential SQL MCM candidate if we could share testimonials about the SQL Microsoft Certified Master program from non-Microsoft employees Out of the 57 MCMs in the world, only 12 are not Microsoft employees (by the way – the numbers on our Meet the Microsoft Certified Masters...

We have just started publishing a list of people who have earned an MCM and/or MCA certification over at our Microsoft Learning site. Go take a look here . We'll be adding names as MCM's and MCA's ask us to, it's entirely optional, and we hope this brings them some much deserved publicity. Gaining...

Hi All, I'm happy to share a little retrospective from another one of our Directory MCM's, Rob Silver , who wrote us the following just the other day. It's a great example of ROI / benefits from investing in the program that I hope more and more people are seeing out there. Hi Per/Ryan, Some...

Further to the recent post on this from Per I was talking with a partner today who has made and continues to make considerable investments in OCS MCM for their UC consulting practice. They told me that they have also seen evidence of RFPs requiring that the respondant have an MCM on staff. The partner...

According to the visionaries the future is ‘all in the cloud man!’. Well, not to be out done we have just launched a new set of online labs for the exclusive use of certified OCS MCMs. These 4 new lab environments are based on the core labs that we use for the program but also include a second set of...

It’s great to hear positive results after someone attends one of our programs and recently we received such great feedback. Lucian Petru, a participant from the May 2009 Directory rotation, had this to say: Speaking of ROI...I can tell you it's 1000% worth it. I attended the MCM Directory program...

An interesting article about Microsoft's certification story over at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.08.geekofalltrades.aspx

Did you know that every new MCM Exchange Server 2007 gets a personal letter, signed (really signed, I send them over to his office, he kindly signs them for me) by Rajesh Jha , the Corporate VP of Microsoft Exchange and Office Live? (Rajesh did an intro on the EHLO blog here .) Why does he do that...

Some people have been asking, and we've hinted some before. Although you won't get the 100% be all, end all answer here, there is some more info to share. The most recent question came from Triton.Deep over at the MCSE World forum . The question is: what's the cost to upgrade my Master cert when new...

On Monday this week we kicked off the sixth SQL Server capstone training rotation, now titled “Microsoft Certified Master” for SQL Server 2008. We had 17 victims, er attendees show up bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on the most challenging training available on the SQL Platform. We started...

This post was written by Rajeev Krishnan who attended Rotation 1 of OCS Master. In it he shares his hints and tips on getting into and surviving the program. Rajeev is a Senior Consultant for Microsoft Global Services in India. I was one of the fortunate people to have been invited for the alpha...

The weekend just passed, Jan 30/31 2009, I organized an event we refer to as Continued Education, for members of the Exchange Masters Community. I just wanted to post a few details to give anyone wondering what else joining this community means, over and above getting the training and a certification...

We're constantly looking to improve our programs, and knowing that these are tough times all around, we're more interested than ever in making these programs as useful as possible to you. The question, then, is: what can the Master programs do for you? What would you, and your employer, need to see from...