Microsoft has changed their policy on retiring certifications.

If you will remember, over a year ago Microsoft had announced that Windows NT 4.0 certifications were being retired on December 31st, 2001. This meant that everyone who had slaved for months or even years to pass their exams had to rush to take new exams for newest operating system (Windows 2000).

Needless to say, this announcement caused quite a stir in much of computer industry. There were hundreds of thousands of MCSE's, and all of them were effected by this decision. What made it even worse was fact that most of us were not even upgrading to Windows 2000 anytime in near future. Thus, we had to get certified yet we didn't really need to get certified to do our jobs.

There were quite a few annoucements. The two regarding MCSE's state exactly what I had suggested in a previous article "Microsoft's ^@&^#&@ W2K MCSE Policy", so I was very happy indeed.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Microsoft/W2KMCSEcertification.htm

...on Windows NT 4.0, which designates related certification as based on Windows NT 4.0. This designation applies to following certifications: MCP, MCSE, MCSE+I, MCP+I, and MCP+Site Building. Thus, this MCSE would formally be called "MCSE on Windows NT 4.0."

...on Microsoft Windows 2000, which designates related certification as based on Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, or Windows Server .NET. This designation applies to following certifications: MCP, MCSE, MCSA, and MCDBA (except for latter, it's called "MCDBA on SQL Server 2000" instead). Here, this MCSE would formally be called "MCSE on Microsoft Windows 2000."

The bottom line is simple. Those of us who have MCSE certification do not need to worry about losing it at end of year. It also makes things much easier for me as an employer - now I will be able to look at a certification and get a little more information. Instead of just finding out someone is an expert on Microsoft operating systems, I will now find out exactly which operating system.

I am aware of security, so I tend to create a different username and password for each and every account. This makes it impossible for a malicious person to break into one account and thus get information from all of my accounts.

Most people do not go through this much trouble. In fact, most people simply create all of their usernames as their own first and last name (perhaps with a number to make it unique) and use very simple, and easily guessed, passwords.

Microsoft has now come along and proposed a solution to this situation. Well, proposed is not right word - Microsoft is implementing a solution. It's actually a key component of their .NET strategy.

What they are doing is creating a "passport", called "Microsoft passport", which is more or less intended to become standard way of gaining access to objects and information on internet.

The concept is very simple indeed. You merely create a passport account and give it a unique username (your email address). You also give it a password. >From that point forward, you can use exact same username and password to access anything which supports passports (everything on a Microsoft web site, at least).

So far this is no different than any other account identifier. For example, on Yahoo you create a Yahoo ID, which can be used to access any feature operated by that company. Excite has something similar as do many other web sites.