In the first year, they are only announcing 250 slots, so get in line!. To this date, Microsoft has certified 66 and plans to grant 3,000 within the next five to seven years. The cost of this program isn't cheap, as it is a $200 application fee and $10,000 once you are accepted into the program.
According to the article, they are charging the fee because:
Ruth contends that the high fee is "cost recovery," since the program requires bringing together four to six highly qualified architects in a single location several times throughout the board review process. He believes the fee and the high level of experience that candidates must demonstrate will filter out less serious candidates. Ruth said that those who've achieved the MCA so far have upwards of 25 year's worth of experience, with most having 10 to 15 years in an architecting role. "This cannot be for everyone," he added.
The MCAP has three distinct paths.
- MCA: Solutions - Solutions architects communicate primarily with business owners within a company and with the technical staff that delivers the solution. The projects they work on affect the enterprise.
- MCA: Infrastructure - Communicate mainly with operations managers who are responsible for maintaining the IT environment and end users, and with the engineers that maintain specific areas of the infrastructure.
- MCA: Messaging - the first ‘Depth Architect’ program under the Microsoft Certified Architect umbrella, is to build a community of trusted enterprise messaging architects, focused on Microsoft Exchange Server, that are capable of architecting the most complicated messaging solutions in the world.
The official announcement can be found
here.
