Office 365 Certifiction, who is it for?

I have been contacted recently by several Microsoft Office Specialists that support information workers wanting to know which resources are best for learning Office 365 with a view to certify at some point in the future. They are currently certified as Microsoft Office Specialist for the 2007 Office System, are aware of  recent changes within the industry and have decided to up-skill.

With the recent hubbub over cloud services it's obvious that people are looking at Office 365 exams; 70-321 and 70-323 as the next step, however for IT staff in this category it may not be the right choice.


Microsoft Office Specialist Certification

Microsoft have ran the "MOS" certification programmes for many years through many iterations of the Office applications. Until the 2010 edition it has confined itself to Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Word. With the rise in popularity of SharePoint it's a solid decision by Microsoft to include this with the MOS: 2010 certification giving a total of 8 exams required.

However, the Office 365 certifications belong to the ecosystem of certifications in the professional track. There are two required to provide the full Office 365 Administrator professional series certification:

MCTS: Administering Office 365.
Exam number 70-323 which covers the following learning domains:

• Administer Microsoft Office 365 (35%)
• Administer SharePoint Online (31%)
• Administer Exchange and Lync Online (34%)

Pro: Deploying Office 365. 
Exam number 70-321 which covers the following learning domains:

• Plan and Implement Office 365 Accounts and Services (20%)
• Plan for and Configure SharePoint Online (19%)
• Plan for Exchange Online (20%)
• Implement Exchange Online (21%)
• Plan Online Services and Infrastructure (20%)

As can be seen they require detailed knowledge of Active Directory Domain Services, Certificate Services as well as DNS infrastructure and SSO. But theres also a requirement for good working knowledge of Exchange, SharePoint 2013 and to a lesser extent Lync Server. Add to this the Office 365 applications and that the exams require good working knowledge of PowerShell Cmdlets and we have a series of quite tough exams aimed at existing administrators for Microsoft infrastructure and application services and not those supporting information workers.
It's also true to state that the exams centre on larger organisations with thousands of users over many sites, often with Hybrid environments blending on-premise services with private cloud.

For IT Professionals looking to certify with Office 365 to support the SME market it's worth taking a look at  exam 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses.

For existing MOS certified staff looking at Office 365 from a support point of view then the Microsoft Office Specialist on Microsoft Office 2010 is the right place to start, specifically exam 77-891 MOS: Microsoft Office 365, and Features.

I'll close with a few links to some of the best Office 365 resources out there at the moment.
First the Official Jump Start videos from Microsoft:

Office 365 Jump Start Videos:

And finally the Microsoft Office PDF by Katherine Murray, Connect and Collaborate Virtually Anywhere, Anytime:

Office 365 PDF eBook: