The MVP program (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) is designed to recognize “technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community.” People are always curious about the make-up of the MVP group (including MVPs themselves), so I decided to take a closer look at the section to which I belong.

Information about MVPs is publicly available on the MVP web site. Microsoft lists 505 Office Servers and Services MVPs, which is the group that deals with technologies such as SharePoint, Exchange, and Office 365. Microsoft employs one of those listed and some MVPs wish to be anonymous and do not allow the publication of their personal details on the MVP site. However, I managed to find details for 486 MVPs, or 96.43% of the total adjusted population (504). The figures presented below are based on that data.

The data used omits some MVPs who credibly might be included. For example, Andy Malone’s award is for cloud and datacenter management, yet Andy spends a lot of his time teaching people to use Office 365 effectively. Another example is Brian Desmond, an expert in Active Directory and Identity Management, both of which are essential underpinnings for the Office Servers and Services family.

However, we must have a baseline and that baseline comes from the way Microsoft categorizes MVPs. Here are some data points to consider.

Top Ten Countries

Unsurprisingly, given that it is both Microsoft’s largest and home market, the U.S. tops the list with 108 MVPs with a spill-over into Canada. The U.K. is Microsoft’s second largest and second oldest subsidiary and has always played a strong role in the Office community, so has a large group. The same is true for Australia, which was a strong participant in early Exchange and SharePoint deployments.

1. United States: 108
2. Canada: 46
3. United Kingdom: 25
4. Australia: 23
5. Japan: 20
6. China: 18
7. Germany: 16
8. France: 15
9. Italy: 13
10. India/Korea: 12

The number for China is likely higher by 5-6 as experience indicates that many of the anonymous MVPs are based in China.

In other figures, we see that Sri Lanka (8) has more MVPs than mature European markets like Belgium and Spain (both 7) or Norway (5). Given the relative market sizes and the fact that Microsoft has Office 365 datacenters in India, it also seems strange that Sri Lanka is so close to the count of Indian MVPs (13).

Sometimes it happens that a Microsoft MVP local lead is successful in recruiting several MVPs over a short period to swell the representation of a country. Given that four of the eight Sri Lankan MVPs have just one or two awards, this might be the case here. Another sign of recent activity is that the Sri Lankan MVPs have an average tenure of 3.38 years while Swedish MVPs (9) have an average tenure of 6.56 years.

Some recent discussions in the MVP Facebook group considered the issue of how many MVPs are female, spurred on by a very interesting article that explained how to use the Microsoft Cognitive API to analyze the sex and age of people based on their photos. In this instance, MVP Jamie Dixon examined the make-up of the U.S.-based MVPs, again using publicly-available data from the MVP web site. That analysis established that 12% of the U.S. MVP community is female.

The Office 365 MVP data indicates that 41 or 8.44% is female (it is sometimes hard to know, even with photos). I do not believe that including the anonymous MVPs into this analysis will change matters in any significant way. As I noted in the Facebook group, this is in line with my experience of managing large technical communities, where the number of female employees ranged from 13% to 6% depending on the grade. I suspect that the amount of contribution required from an individual before they get through the MVP nomination process tends to favor more senior individuals. In this light, the 8.44% result is understandable but “could do better”.

The Focus Areas

Each MVP focuses on a certain area of technology. It’s quite difficult to decide the technology areas in which some MVPs specialize, so some inspired guesswork and data retrieved from MVP profiles (from the MVP site and LinkedIn) plus individual blogs contributed to the distribution.

Office 365 includes both MVPs who specialize in more than a single workload (i.e. they do not focus on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for Business, or Yammer) and MVPs where insufficient evidence exists to put them into one of the other categories. It could be that this group is smaller (perhaps around 70) and that the other categories need to be adjusted upwards. For now, here’s my best guess:

• SharePoint: 234
• Office 365: 118
• Exchange: 66
• Skype: 60
• Yammer: 8

The size of an individual grouping changes over time. For example, two years ago, there were 103 Exchange MVPs, now there are 66. The change marks the transition of work from on-premises Exchange to Office 365 and the attendant refocusing of individuals on that transition.

What can be surprising is the clustering of people within a specialty inside one country. The best example of this is Canada, where 28 of the 46 MVPs (54%) focus on SharePoint. The U.S. has a slightly higher percentage of SharePoint MVPs (58% – 63 from 108), so the percentage isn’t the surprise. It’s rather that Canada boasts 11.97% of the total worldwide SharePoint MVP population. France, for instance, has a substantially higher GDP than Canada, yet has only 7 SharePoint MVPs. Although you cannot translate a country’s GDP into any indication of how much SharePoint work goes on, it’s reasonable to assume that the higher the economic activity, the more technology is consumed. But it’s just one way of looking at a piece of data.

Another surprise is that the United States has only 20 Exchange MVPs. Although this is nearly a third of the worldwide population, the Exchange has always been a strong player in the U.S. market, yet there are relatively few MVPs supporting the activity. On the upside, the Exchange MVP community is very experienced, hence the name “Exchange grumpies” attributed to a certain set of these MVPs.

All of this proves that different reasons underpin why MVP populations exist in certain locations and disciplines. In the case of Canada, it’s likely that a strong local SharePoint community and encouragement from the Microsoft Canada subsidiary contributed to the growth in MVPs. It’s an experienced bunch too (15 of the 26 have five or more years in the program), which usually helps in terms of leadership. The people factor in terms of mentoring others and finding and then proposing suitable candidates to become MVPs cannot be discounted either.

Number of Awards

MVPs receive awards on an annual basis. Microsoft renews MVP status after a review by the local MVP program manager and the sponsoring product group. MVPs learn of their renewal through email, the arrival of which is often fraught with anticipation. The decision to renew is based on an individual’s participation in the MVP program and their contribution to the Microsoft technical community.

Measurement of contribution is an interesting debate. Some MVPs contribute by answering user questions in technical forums like the Microsoft Tech Community (Vasil Michev and Juan Carlos González Martin are notably proactive here). Others prefer to speak at conferences like Microsoft Ignite, others are prolific writers, while others serve as the leaders of country or regional-level user groups. In all cases, it is not the actual form of contribution that is important. Rather, it is the impact of that contribution, something that is not always obvious or easy to measure.

Here is a list of the most experienced MVPs based on the number of awards each has received. The achievement of Ed Crowley to be an Exchange MVP for essentially the entire lifetime of the Exchange product is extraordinary. Ed is well known for his catchphrase “There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.”

Michael Greth has been an MVP for 19 years, but as SharePoint first shipped in 2001, he has not received awards in the same discipline for all those years.

• Ed Crowley (Exchange): 20
• Michael Greth (SharePoint): 19
• Frank Carius (Exchange): 16
• Thierry Deman (Exchange): 16
• Andy David (Exchange): 14
• Fabrice Romelard (SharePoint): 14
• Glen Scales (Exchange): 14
• Heejin Lee (Office 365): 14
• John Timney (Office 365): 14
• Norbert Fehlauer (Exchange): 14
• Paul Robichaux (Exchange): 14
• Robert L. Bogue (SharePoint): 14
• Spencer J. Harbar (SharePoint): 14
• Tony Redmond (Exchange): 14

The median number of awards across the 486 MVPs is five. In one way, you might consider five years to be how long someone might expect to still be in the program, if they continue to contribute at the required level. However, that assumption is invalid when awards track achievement in different areas of technology. For example, Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012, so MVPs who work with Yammer have less time in the program than those who work with Exchange or SharePoint.

Fifty-four (11.1%) of the MVPs are now in their first award cycle, 28 of which are SharePoint MVPs. Introducing new people to the program at the rate of over 10% is a reasonable refresh and reflects the normal turnover that you might see in any population working with technology.

It’s important to say that the MVP community does not always gain people. Some also leave, perhaps because they are no longer working in an area of technology that’s important to Microsoft or because they no longer have the time available to make the expected contribution.

The MVP community flexes and changes to reflect what’s happening in the real world, which means that Microsoft is always looking for great candidates to join. You can nominate yourself or someone else online. Before you do, read this piece by MVP Melanie Hohertz and make sure that you really want what you will take on!

Follow Tony on Twitter @12Knocksinna.

Want to know more about how to manage Office 365? Find what you need to know in “Office 365 for IT Pros”, the most comprehensive eBook covering all aspects of Office 365. Available in PDF and EPUB formats (suitable for iBooks) or for Amazon Kindle.

List of Office Servers and Services MVPs as at 1-Jan-2017

Here is the data I used for the analysis.