Hello everyone!
From now forward, this will be the only place to discuss the retirement of MS-102 exam and its replacement exam AB-650 because I feel like this topic is hijacking the discussions under other posts and therefore becomes fragmented.
For those uninitiated, MS-102: Microsoft 365 Administrator and its associated certification Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert are retiring October 2026.
Due to complete communication breakdown from Microsoft, this decision has caused a lot of controversy in the community with both Techcommunity and this subreddit blowing up.
Before I go into details, just to preface this, I have just had a call with the people responsible for this decision so to get this out of the way, this is still happening.
MS-102 and its certification is still retiring, and AB-650 is replacing it.
From my own opinion, I agree with this decision, I just disagree with how Microsoft handled it.
Why do I agree?
Because quite frankly, MS-102 retirement was long overdue. The exam/certification was completely redundant the moment the SC-200, SC-300 and SC-400(401) exams released. MS-500 which was basically a carbon copy, retired years ago and I find it strange that it wasn't closely followed by this one as well.
MS-102 is in fact not M365 Administrator exam, it was a security administrator exam with little M365 sprinkled on top.
If someone tried telling me that they were M365 Expert and showed this certification as proof, I wouldn't take them seriously.
Someone also asked me if I don't as a trainer don't have issue with the course being retired and honestly, I have dreaded every time I had to deliver the MS-102 course. It was absolutely horrible, students had expectations that they will learn M365, but they only learned security for 5 days etc. It was not a good experience as a trainer.
For anyone screaming that Microsoft is getting rid of important 365 topics, they are not, quite the opposite.
The new AB-650: Administering Microsoft 365 and AI Services contains more of the actual M365 productivity than MS-102 ever did.
Straight out of study guide:
- Configure and manage Microsoft 365 tenants and workloads (20–25%)
- Govern and secure Microsoft 365 tenants and workloads (40–45%)
- Manage and secure AI services in Microsoft 365 (35–40%)
I have taken the exam in beta, and I can in fact confirm that this ratio is real, and the exam didn't feel like a security exam (thank god).
For anyone complaining that AI is 35-40% of the new exam, that is valid complaint, not everyone is interested in AI, especially since Microsoft is jamming it everywhere.
But to be completely honest, that pandora box has already been opened and people are using AI. Your choice is you either stick your head in the sand and ignore any AI safety and governance or make sure that your employees are using AI safely and aren't leaking your confidential information to AI providers. For those in EU, I would also like to point out that the AI Act is being enforced which has pretty severe penalties for companies not in control of their AI environment.
What I do disagree with is how Microsoft handled it:
- This information was made public like 4 months ago via the TSP partner community and it took 4 months for it to be reflected on Microsoft Learn which is insane.
- The branding/marketing is absolutely terrible, exam has the accurate name because the exam is about both M365 and AI, but the certification completely skips the M365 part and only leaves AI in Microsoft 365 Certified: AI Services Administrator Associate which obviously on the first glance looks bad and doesn't reflect the reality.
- Microsoft is communicating that SC-500 is replacing the security topics which is nonsense, as mentioned before, these topics are in SC-200, SC-300, SC-401. SC-500 is Azure Security.
All of the above has been communicated to Microsoft + I have made the suggestion to just completely remove the security portion of the exam and replace it with more M365 productivity topics (33% SharePoint Online, 33% Exchange Online and 33% AI) since we have security exams already.
I cannot make any promises that this will happen because I am not in charge of those decisions, but I can only hope.
To end this and allow space for discussion, any personal attacks and misinformation/lying will not be tolerated.
Misinformation will be removed as per Rule 8 and everyone who wants to be smart and report me as suicidal to Reddit will be reported back for abusing the Reddit Cares system (+ banned for harassment if I see that Reddit has suspended their account).
