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.
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