• Put Network Essentials back into the MCSE. This is important information that everyone should know, and just saying that this is assumed knowledge isn't good enough. As new people come into the networking field, they are not going to know this information and we'll all suffer for that later. Without a requirement in the MCSE, it forces those who want to demonstrate competency in the area to complete CompTIA's Network+ certification.
  
  
• Add a hands-on component. I would keep the existing 70-210 (Win2K Professional), 70-215 (Win2K Server), 70-216 (Win2K networking) and 70-217 (Win2K Directory Services) exams in the MCSE program. These are fine as is and don't require any tweaking. However, I would add a hands-on troubleshooting exam for the MCSE program, which must be done as the last MCSE exam. This borrows ideas from Novell's Service and Support exam and Red Hat's RHCE exam. For example, in my ideal world it could comprise these three components, which would be tested over a day:
  • Hands-on server hardware and networking hardware troubleshooting exercises. This might take 2-3 hours.
  • Theory exam about server and networking hardware, which might take 60-90 minutes.
  • Hands-on Windows 2000 troubleshooting exercises. These again might take 2-3 hours.
  Now, I know that the general feeling seems to be that this is too hard to organize, but I think it is doable -- Red Hat have shown us it can be done. With an exam of this nature, it would once and for all ensures that MCSEs really do know their stuff, killing the "paper MCSE" moniker. I really believe that this would add value back to the MCSE and people would be prepared to pay significant amounts of money to take this exam, which should cover the significant costs involved in setting this testing up. For example, I could imagine that this test may cost something in range of $600-$1,000 to sit, which is comparable in cost or less than the Red Hat and Cisco CCIE hands-on lab exams.
  
  
• Drop some exams. Since we have six exams already for the MCSE, this doesn't leave any room for design electives or BackOffice electives, so I'll have to drop them from my new MCSE design.
  
  
• Create a new premium certification. With the demise of the MCSE+I, I think that there is scope for a new premium MCSE certification level. We'll leave the name for a marketing guru, but we'll use MCEE (Microsoft Certified Enterprise Engineer) for now as a working title. The MCSE would be a prerequisite to entering this program. Based on the electives chosen, it could consist of a number of streams: Enterprise Win2K Directory Services, Enterprise Win2K network infrastructure, Enterprise Win2K security or Enterprise Win2K migration.
  For example, you would take one of the existing 70-219 (Designing Directory Services), 70-220 (Designing security), 70-221 (Designing Network Infrastructure) or 70-222 (Upgrading from NT 4.0 ) exams. Then depending on the elective taken, there would be a advanced, hands-on, half-day troubleshooting lab exam to cover the area of specialization - say AD, or Win2K security.
  Lastly, this new MCEE program would include two elective exams that would include the existing electives from the current MCSE pool. However, these electives would not be expired in the same way they do now: Only the core operating system exams would be expired.

But those are just my ideas: What would you change? I'm interested in hearing what you ideas you have. Post them below or e-mail me at .

In my February column, I briefly mentioned that I was preparing for the 70-240 Windows 2000 accelerated upgrade exam. I'm extremely relieved to tell you that I did pass that exam and my subsequent design exam and have now completed upgrading my MCSE for Win2K. However, I'm thinking it may be a good idea to keep going and complete a few more electives.

It seems that 90 percent of the MCSE population did TCP/IP and IIS 3.0 for their MCSE electives, so they are facing a total of four exams before they can upgrade their certification. Fortunately I had done some more recent electives and didn't need to upgrade my electives since I still had Exchange 5.5 and SNA Server 4.0 as valid electives. However, my concern is how quickly these Microsoft exams get expired. It's been five years now since I originally completed my MCSE on version 3.51, and since that time I've had 17 exams that I had passed become or will become expired (and this doesn't include any exams taken for my MCSD, which I held between 1996 and 2000). So I was thinking it would be a good idea to get some electives under my belt now, rather than being forced to later when it suits Microsoft and possibly won't suit me. My plan is to sit the Win2K network infrastructure design exam and use this as an elective, and later in the year I am contemplating taking one or both of the Exchange 2000 exams. I would definitely take an exam for Host Integration Server 2000 if offered since I had taken the exams for SNA Server (the old name for the product) versions 2.11, 3.0 and 4.0. However, it doesn't seem Microsoft has any immediate plans for an exam on this product.

What are your MCSE elective plans? How many electives have you taken? Post your comments below, or contact me at the address above. Until next month....