How Microsoft Destroyed Their Certification Program With One Blog Post
UPDATE – April 7, 2026
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it did.
TL;DR – lots of Dynamics and Power Platform exams are being retired. I don't care about Dynamics, but Power Platform is a different story:
- PL-200 is being retired. In my opinion, this is one of the few exams that should have actually been retired a while ago. But it's odd that PL-400 is staying around when PL-200 is leaving
- PL-500 is being retired. I dislike this decision, but admittedly RPA is no longer the bee's knees, and Power Automate isn't that great (as I talk about in this article). Similar to the last point, it's odd that PL-300 gets to stick around when PL-500 is leaving, especially since most of PL-300's exam content is covered in DP-600
- PL-600 is being retired, which is the worst decision in this latest batch of exam retirements. Retiring a solution architect exam is crazy work. Sorry to everyone who busted their ass to get this one.
I'll just copy-paste some grumblings from my LinkedIn post I wrote about this, and move on to a different topic (hopefully something positive).
I think this is the last straw for me, to the point where I can officially recommend that if you are thinking of taking a Microsoft exam, just don't. Do AWS or GCP for cloud, Databricks for data engineering, GitLab for DevSecOps, or anything else besides Microsoft. At least these companies (hopefully) won't toss all their learning and certs to the curb when the next new shiny thing enters their view.
ORIGINAL POST
Last year I did a lot of work to study for and pass several Microsoft and UiPath certification exams. I enjoy the grind that it takes to do well on exams, so much so that I wrote a post about this last year. At this point I have extensive experience with both of these exam providers.
I've been especially impressed by Microsoft's exam program, which has some unique benefits compared to its competitors:
- Beta exams
- Free renewals
- Very reasonable cost (Fundamentals/GitHub – $99, Associate/Expert – $165), and even cheaper if you register as a student
All of these benefits and more converted me to becoming a voracious Microsoft learner throughout all of 2025.
So what went wrong?
Microsoft made a blog post where they announced several exam additions and changes focused around AI (of course).
New exams include:
- Azure Databricks Data Engineer Associate
- SQL AI Developer Associate
- Cybersecurity Business Professional
But more importantly – and the focus for this blog post – Microsoft is retiring several of their certifications for “new” AI-focused exams:
| Retiring Microsoft Certification | Replacement Certification |
|---|---|
| Azure Data Scientist Associate (Exam DP‑100) | Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) Engineer Associate (Exam AI‑300) |
| Azure AI Fundamentals (Exam AI‑900) | Azure AI Fundamentals (Exam AI‑901) |
| Azure AI Engineer Associate (Exam AI‑102) | Azure AI App and Agent Developer Associate (Exam AI‑103) |
| Azure Developer Associate (Exam AZ‑204) | Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate (Exam AI‑200) |
| Azure Security Engineer Associate (Exam AZ‑500) | Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate (Exam SC‑500) |
They are also consolidating their Windows Server Hybrid Administrator exams (AZ‑800 and AZ‑801) into one exam (AZ‑802), which seems like a decent change. But unfortunately that change is the only decent one:
- AI-103 at least makes some sense, but couldn't AI-102 have just been updated to have more agentic questions?
- AI-200 and SC-500 are the most frustrating, more on this later
- AI-300 seems to be an odd combo of DP-100's machine learning topics plus some DevOps-related topics
- AI-901 is the most confusing. Why is AI-900 being replaced with this “new” exam that has the exact same name?
My issue with AI-200 and SC-500 is that their existence suggests that people should prioritize developing and securing AI above all else. In reality though, and hold on to your hats for this one – people develop and secure more than just AI. They also “operationalize” more than just AI. But this current approach sends a subtle message that AI is the only thing worth learning. And if you want to learn something else, it still has to tie back to AI somehow.
I get that AI is important; I really do. Although a part of my soul dies every time a LinkedIn cringe-poster tells me AI is the second coming of Jesus Christ, I can't deny that AI is very powerful, and AI is critical to learn. But Microsoft shoving AI into everyone's face, and injecting it into every trace of their learning platform, at the expense of other kinds of learning, is very disappointing to me.
I will readily admit that part of my disappointment is because I have three of the certifications that are getting retired. Of course I'd be bitter about that. But that frustration will fade soon. The disappointment that will last longer is the gradual blending of Microsoft's learning into an AI-centric homogenized mush.
I plan to take the new AI exams when they're in beta, but if I fail the beta exams, I don't think I'll take the official exams later, unless they're given for free. This is definitely the sentiment for other exam takers as well. I recommend reading the comments left under Microsoft's blog post, if my blog post hasn't bored you to death yet. Some people are asking some great questions about exam renewal, validity, and more. And so far, the answers aren't very encouraging.