How many people share your Microsoft qualifications?

When I am revising hard to pass my various exams I often get asked by friends and family “so what exactly does this qualification mean?”

The implied question is “how special is this?” or “how many millions of others already have one of these?” to which I never had an answer because Microsoft never provided one.

Now I can answer these questions as Microsoft have posted a page listing all the major technical qualifications such as MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCSD and MCDST along with the number of people who hold each one. Obviously some people get counted several times for their MCP, MCSA and MCSE (for example), but it is still a useful indication of how you compare to others. They have said this page will be updated monthly, and should soon include all the new Vista and Exchange 2007 MCITP stuff.

As things stand at the moment this means that when I pass my 70-291 (hopefully very soon) I will be one of about 42,000 people in the world with an MCSA:Messaging (2003).

I’m not sure how special that makes me feel, but it is certainly a step up from being one-in-two-million vanilla MCPs.