3 Reasons Why Microsoft’s Retiring The MS-500 Is A Big Deal

By now you’ve read that Microsoft is retiring the MS-500 exam June 30, 2023. Here are my 3 reasons why this is a big deal.

MS-500 Was One Of Four Prerequisite Exams For SC-100

Right now there are four associate prerequisite exams: AZ-500 Azure Security Engineer, MS-500 Microsoft 365 Security Administrator, SC-200 Security Operations Analyst and SC-300 Identity And Access Administrator. Now with the news that Microsoft will retire the MS-500 there are only three. That is rerouting 25% of its traffic towards the other 3 exams.

Shows That Microsoft Is Going All In On Azure Cloud

In 2020, Microsoft started retiring all of the Microsoft product-connected certification exams in favor of the Azure role based certifications. Now Microsoft is axing the MS-500 but keeping the AZ-500. This is not a mistake. This is a strategy to showcase that even though Microsoft 365 is still making money, Azure cloud is the direction that Microsoft is going.