MCM, MSA, and renamed versions of those certifications are no longer being offered after Oct 1, 2013. The announcement was made in email, late on Friday night is the US, which was Saturday morning for those of us living in European/Middle East/African timezones.
This decision, along with the recent ending of TechNet subscriptions sends a poor message about how Microsoft views their Enterprise server products and the need for people with deep technical knowledge of their products. Their focus is not on deployment on-premise. Microsoft want to encourage everyone in the cloud.
There has been lot of midtrust caused by these announcements – two of the more reasoned blog articles that provides more insight:
http://www.stevieg.org/2013/08/are-microsoft-losing-friends-and-alienating-it-pros/
http://www.devinonearth.com/2013/08/defending-a-bad-decision/
