As the cloud continues growing and becoming an integral part of daily life and work, competition between cloud service providers grows with it. Microsoft Azure is one of the emerging market leaders with about 20% of the cloud market share, and certifications in the service are quite rigorous, holding significant value as proof of professional knowledge and skills.

There are currently 14 Microsoft Azure certifications available within Microsoft’s vast library of training options. Each certification consists of one to two demanding exams for which there are various preparation options available online. Preparing for the exams requires dedicated studying for weeks or months, but the payoff of significant growth and recognition in the cloud arena makes the investment worthy of the effort.

Available Azure Certifications and Categories

The 14 Azure certifications fall into four main categories: Fundamentals, Associate, Expert, and Specialty. The first three groups form a role-based system in which the certifications focus on different levels of difficulty for certain professional careers. The Specialty certifications concentrate on more narrow fields or specific technical areas that might apply to various roles. The category and name of the relevant exam(s) for each certification are:

• Azure Fundamentals (Fundamentals, Exam AZ-900)
• Azure Data Fundamentals (Fundamentals, Exam DP-900)
• Azure AI Fundamentals (Fundamentals, Exam AI-900)
• Azure Data Scientist (Associate, Exam DP-100)
• Azure Database Administrator (Associate, Exam D-300)
• Azure Administrator (Associate, Exam AZ-104)
• Azure Data Engineer (Associate, Exams DP-200 and DP-201)
• Azure Security Engineer (Associate, Exam AZ-500)
• Azure AI Engineer (Associate, Exam AI-100)
• Azure Developer (Associate, Exam AZ-204)
• Azure Solutions Architect (Expert, Exams AZ-303 and AZ-304)
• DevOps Engineer (Expert, Exam AZ-400)
• Azure IoT Developer (Specialty, Exam AZ-220)
• Azure for SAP Workloads (Specialty, Exam AZ-120)

The below sections discuss further details about each of the certifications.

Fundamentals

Unlike the other categories, the Fundamentals Azure certifications do not require any specific prerequisites. However, Microsoft does recommend having some basic knowledge of data usage in Azure. Experience certainly does help, but even those just starting out in the field can use these certifications as a starting point to guide their learning and form a base of knowledge for other exams. The three Fundamentals certifications and the exams associated with them are:

• Azure Fundamentals (Exam AZ-900)
• Azure Data Fundamentals (Exam DP-900)
• Azure AI Fundamentals (Exam AI-900)

Current or aspiring developers would benefit most from the Azure Fundamentals certification. It covers basic knowledge of cloud services, the main services of Microsoft Azure, general security and privacy, Azure prices, and Azure life cycles.

The Azure Data Fundamentals certification, on the other hand, is ideal for candidates looking to get involved in data engineering or database administration. It evaluates basic data concepts both related to and exterior to Azure, as well as analytics workload analysis in Azure.

Finally, Azure AI Fundamentals can apply to a variety of roles in the fields of AI engineering, data science, development, and solutions architecture. This certification will test the candidate’s knowledge in areas such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing in relation to Azure services.