Updated July 3rd: Includes newly registered awardees and awardees who changed category. Added overview of Office Servers and Services numbers over last couple of years.
With the latest annual award cycle, one might be curious which impact it had on the MVP population. I performed a similar exercise last year to compare the impact of the start of the new award cycle. This year, all the MVP’s previously on the January and October cycles were also included in the reviews, making this year the first one where MVP leads and others had to perform the dauntless task of reviewing community contributions of over 3,500 people.
For comparison, I had a look at the public MVP statistics of July 1st against those of June 26th, to exclude significant noise from the monthly awardees. To start, let us first have a look at the total population of MVP’s. From the numbers, it is clear some type of correction took place, as the total number of MVP’s went down from 3,815 last month to 3,025 now (-21%).
As big changes might be a result of change of focus, the following table contains the changes per award category from June 2018 to July 2018. Note that the total number of MVP’s doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as people can be awarded in more than one category; there are 50 MVP’s with multiple award categories.
| Competence | Jun2018 | July2018 | Change |
| Access | 39 | 29 | -26% |
| AI | 28 | 58 | 107% |
| Business Solutions | 221 | 184 | -17% |
| Cloud and Datacenter Management | 410 | 302 | -26% |
| Data Platform | 442 | 366 | -17% |
| Enterprise Mobility | 159 | 122 | -23% |
| Excel | 103 | 84 | -18% |
| Microsoft Azure | 370 | 368 | -1% |
| Office Development | 44 | 33 | -25% |
| Office Servers and Services | 490 | 383 | -22% |
| OneNote | 15 | 12 | -20% |
| Outlook | 14 | 11 | -21% |
| PowerPoint | 40 | 34 | -15% |
| Visio | 15 | 10 | -33% |
| Visual Studio and Development Technologies |
1043 | 780 | -25% |
| Windows and Devices for IT | 136 | 87 | -36% |
| Windows Development | 273 | 186 | -32% |
| Word | 23 | 19 | -17% |
| Total | 3865 | 3066 | -21% |
Except for the AI MVP’s, all the numbers are down. Way down. Word is quite a number of long-standing MVP’s have not been re-awarded this cycle. One could only guess for the motivation (only Microsoft knows), but it could be due to the ongoing shift from on-premises technology to cloud-based technology.
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. Be advised that MVP’s that are anonymous or have profiles without location (~23 for Office Servers and Services), are not taken into account since their location is unknown.
| Country | Number | Country | Number | Country | Number |
| Argentina | 0 (-100%) | Ireland | 1 (0%) | Saudi Arabia | 1 (0%) |
| Australia | 17 (-40%) | Israel | 0 (-100%) | Serbia | 1 (0%) |
| Austria | 2 (0%) | Italy | 8 (-20%) | Singapore | 3 (-25%) |
| Belgium | 8 (0%) | Japan | 11 (-45%) | Slovakia | 1 (0%) |
| Bosnia-Herzegovina | 2 (0%) | Jordan | 1 (0%) | Slovenia | 1 (-50%) |
| Brazil | 2 (-34%) | Korea | 6 (-15%) | South Africa | 4 (-20%) |
| Bulgaria | 1 (0%) | Latvia | 1 (0%) | Spain | 5 (-17%) |
| Canada | 29 (-24%) | Macedonia F.Y.R.O | 2 (0%) | Sri Lanka | 4 (-43%) |
| Chile | 1 (0%) | Malaysia | 1 (-50%) | Sweden | 6 (-25%) |
| China | 14 (-13%) | Mexico | 2 (-50%) | Switzerland | 5 (0%) |
| Colombia | 2 (0%) | Nepal | 1 (0%) | Thailand | 1 (0%) |
| Croatia | 5 (-17%) | New Zealand | 4 (-20%) | The Netherlands | 13 (-8%) |
| Czech Republic | 3 (-25%) | Norway | 5 (-17%) | Turkey | 4 (-20%) |
| Denmark | 2 (-50%) | Pakistan | 2 (0%) | Ukraine | 1 (-50%) |
| Egypt | 1 (-50%) | Peru | 1 (-50%) | United Arab Emirates | 1 (-50%) |
| Finland | 2 (0%) | Poland | 2 (0%) | United Kingdom | 23 (-15%) |
| France | 15 (-12%) | Portugal | 3 (-25%) | United States | 90 (-19%) |
| Germany | 16 (-20%) | Romania | 1 (-50%) | Uruguay | 1 (0%) |
| Greece | 1 (0%) | Russia | 5 (-50%) | Vietnam | 0 (-100%) |
| Hungary | 2 (-50%) | TOTAL | 383 (-22%) | ||
| India | 12 (-8%) |
As shown, some countries have lost their Office Servers and Service MVP’s completely. Looking at the total number of Office Servers and Services MVP’s over the year, the number went a little up again due to monthly awardees, but with the July cycle, the number of Office Servers and Services MVP’s went from 490 to 383 (-22%).
The number of Office Servers and Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years (since award restructuring).
| Month | oct2016 | jan2017 | jun2017 | jul2017 | jan2018 | jun2018 | jul2018 |
| OSS | 538 | 505 (-7%) | 532 (+5%) | 449 (-16%) | 480 (+6%) | 490 (+2%) | 383 (-21%) |
| Total | N/A | N/A | 4134 | 3490 (-16%) | 3747 (+7%) | 3815 (+2%) | 3030 (-21%) |
Unfortunately, I have no data on the other categories from before june 2017.
If you have questions or comments, please discuss in the comments.
EighTwOne (821) 
I think you will also find 100% Group Policy MVP are gone… we were part of cloud and Data centre which made no sense…
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Hello Michel, I’m curious about the numbers here – not one single Project MVP listed in 2018. I have the honour of being the world’s first ever Microsoft Project MVP in 1995, and I have seen the numbers go up since then but decline in recent years. I was 12 years as an MVP. Today I am the MVP Reconnect Lead for UK. But I’m was pretty sure we had some Project MVP’s in the mix this last FY. I’d be interested in your comments.. Many Thanks (and great insight on the numbers btw). Kelvin
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AND … Whilst I believe that Project should be treated as a separate category (see https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/pages/mvp-award-update) just like Word, Excel, etc, for some bizarre reason Microsoft doesn’t do that and instead lumps it into the Business Solutions group along with all the Dynamics products. Project has never been related to Dynamics and integration is even less now than when Project was a separate MVP category. Its only relatively recently it seems to have been “pushed” into Business Solutions yet has little to do with Dynamics and doesn’t even integrate OOB with these products. Project is one of Microsoft’s highest revenue products yet is treated as a second class citizen when it comes to MVP classification. That can’t be right. It seems like someone “shoved” Project into a grouping because they couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it. But it doesn’t need to be in a grouping – it should stand alone – just like Excel and Word. Clearly the product group folks and the MVP classification folks don’t talk to each other….
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Is Project shifting towards Dynamics PSA?
MVP categories should be solution oriented, not about technology only.
I still don’t get the single categories for Word, Excel, Outlook etc. Why not a single Office Automation category for contributions across all Office products?
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PPT is also separate. The separation is due to historical reasons. They were some of the early MVPs.
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We, the Project MVP’s, have asked repeatedly to many people in many areas to break out the Project MVP’s the same as Word, Excel, etc. on the MVP site. For some reason our request has gone by the wayside. If you are looking for a Project MVP, you can’t find one.
In this last round of awards we are down to 6 Project MVP’s in the US. We are not currently aware of any new Project MVP’s and are hoping some show up on our DL over the next week.
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I just saw a meeting for MVP’s set for Monday to discuss the Taxonomy of the Business Solutions group for MVP’s. I am hoping a solution will be announced then.
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Some seem to have moved to Business Solutions, some to Data Platform. No Project category since 2017 (but also didn’t actively track it)
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MVP’s still get awarded for Project, but they come under the Business Solutions category (no idea why!). A couple of colleagues were awarded it last year for Project. Having said that there are very few these days. 🙂
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I don’t think the conclusion that there was a 21% drop is correct. Sure that’s the drop since a few days ago, but you can get awarded 12 times of the year, but only get dropped once a year. So you’ll see the curve go up and up 11 times during the year, and then drop back down once in July.
Instead you should compare the stats to July last year to account for all that.
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Clint Rutkas also has another good point: “you have to remember this year and last year was the period where we had the grandfather clause depending on when you entered the program when they switched renewal from quarterly to annual.”
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The blog mentions that this year all were up for renewal, including former October/January awardees. Made the similar comment last year when April/July awardees were up.
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Added info.
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Reblogged this on Nishant Rana's Weblog and commented:
Interesting data !
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Thanks for this wonderful article Michel.
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