Mid-2017, I had a look at the publicly available statistics on MVP’s around the world after Microsoft changed their MVP award renewal regime. This was to check if there was any impact noticeable. With the regime change, also came a change that MVP’s can be awarded on a monthly basis. This means people can be awarded every month; maybe not in every category, but overall yes.
For the start of 2018, let’s first have a look at the total population of MVP’s. The total number of MVP’s went down from 3410 in July last year, to 3695 now (-15%). The table below contains the number of awards per category, and the change from July 2017 to January 2018:
| Competence | Jul2017 | Jan2018 | Change |
| Access | 37 | 39 | +5% |
| AI | 1 | 20 | +1900% |
| Business Solutions | 193 | 214 | +11% |
| Cloud and Datacenter Management | 392 | 412 | +5% |
| Data Platform | 399 | 422 | +6% |
| Enterprise Mobility | 148 | 157 | +6% |
| Excel | 94 | 104 | +11% |
| Microsoft Azure | 311 | 350 | +13% |
| Office Development | 38 | 42 | +11% |
| Office Servers and Services | 449 | 480 | +7% |
| OneNote | 15 | 15 | 0% |
| Outlook | 14 | 14 | 0% |
| PowerPoint | 36 | 37 | +3% |
| Visio | 14 | 14 | 0% |
| Visual Studio and Development Technologies | 901 | 1002 | +11% |
| Windows and Devices for IT | 148 | 136 | -8% |
| Windows Development | 277 | 266 | -4% |
| Word | 23 | 23 | 0% |
| Total | 3490 | 3747 | +7% |
Note: The total number of MVP’s doesn’t equal the total number of competences, as people can be awarded in more than one category.
Overall, the numbers are up in most categories. However, as stated before, a big sanitation round is expected for Q3’2018, as this year the former October and January awardees will be up for the new yearly renewal cycle, which takes place mid-2018. The new category introduced last year, Artificial Intelligence, saw a significant number of folks being added.
When zooming in on the Office Servers and Services MVP’s category, the awards per country is shown in the following heath map and table. Note that anonymous MVP’s are not taken into account:
| Country | Number | Country | Number | Country | Number |
| Argentina | 2 (0%) | India | 12 (0%) | Russia | 9 (12%) |
| Australia | 23 (-18%) | Ireland | 1 (-50%) | Saudi Arabia | 1 (100%) |
| Austria | 2 (100%) | Israel | 1 (0%) | Serbia | 1 (0%) |
| Belarus | 1 (100%) | Italy | 10 (-10%) | Singapore | 4 (0%) |
| Belgium | 7 (0%) | Japan | 18 (-6%) | Slovakia | 1 (0%) |
| Bosnia-Herzegovina | 2 (-34%) | Jordan | 1 (100%) | Slovenia | 2 (0%) |
| Brazil | 4 (-56%) | Korea | 7 (-37%) | South Africa | 5 (0%) |
| Brunei Darussalam | 1 (0%) | Kuwait | 1 (0%) | Spain | 6 (0%) |
| Bulgaria | 1 (-50%) | Latvia | 1 (0%) | Sri Lanka | 5 (-38%) |
| Canada | 38 (-14%) | Macedonia F.Y.R.O | 1 (-50%) | Sweden | 8 (-12%) |
| Chile | 1 (-50%) | Malaysia | 2 (-34%) | Switzerland | 5 (-29%) |
| China | 15 (-22%) | Mexico | 4 (0%) | Thailand | 1 (0%) |
| Colombia | 2 (-34%) | Nepal | 1 (100%) | The Netherlands | 15 (25%) |
| Croatia | 6 (20%) | New Caledonia | 1 (100%) | Turkey | 5 (25%) |
| Czech Republic | 4 (100%) | New Zealand | 5 (0%) | Ukraine | 2 (0%) |
| Denmark | 4 (0%) | Norway | 6 (20%) | United Arab Emirates | 3 (-40%) |
| Egypt | 2 (0%) | Pakistan | 2 (0%) | United Kingdom | 25 (0%) |
| Finland | 2 (0%) | Palestine | 1 (0%) | United States | 111 (5%) |
| France | 16 (0%) | Peru | 2 (100%) | Uruguay | 1 (0%) |
| Germany | 19 (26%) | Poland | 3 (0%) | Vietnam | 2 (-50%) |
| Greece | 1 (0%) | Portugal | 4 (-20%) | TOTAL | 480 (-5%) |
| Hungary | 4 (33%) | Romania | 2 (0%) |
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