10/29/2000 -- Members of Microsoft’s certification team said to expect announcements by the end of this year regarding a new premium certification for the MCSE program. The revelation surfaced during a question-and-answer session held with the attendees at the September TechMentor conference in San Francisco.

According to Eckhart Boehme, marketing manager for certification and skills assessment at Microsoft, the new track will “include exams based on Windows 2000.” He said the team is “examining the requirements” and expects to change the name of the certification from its current title, MCSE+Internet.

Some attendees speculated that the new title would include some form of enhanced network architecture and design component, but the Microsoft team downplayed that scenario.

“To be an MCSE, you need to know that stuff [anyway]—the design components,” said Alice Ciccu, exam development program manager. To achieve the Win2K-based MCSE title, “You have to be familiar with architecture.”

At the same session, Boehme said that although Whistler, the next version of Windows 2000 expected out in 2001, will be a “major product enhancement,” it won’t be as extensive as the release of Win2K itself. For that reason, he said, “We won’t require Windows 2000 MCPs or MCSEs to upgrade to Whistler.”

Ciccu said to expect revisions to the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer program in the coming year.

“Changes to that program will focus on the .NET platform being released this fall, as well as Visual Studio, which will be released next year.” -- D.S.

Reprinted from the November 2000 issue of Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine.