strafeonline

I have always been troubled by vendor certification. I find it really difficult to justify spending several thousands of dollars on learning a technology, only to have to sit a refresher course in a few years time, or have to sit a brand new course because the last course is now obsolete.

As I’m learning up on a whole suite of new technologies at the moment, like VMware’s offerings, and Symantec’s security and backup technologies, I find that most of the information I already know due to experience. Of all the free online presentation/quiz style “entry-level” certifications, I enjoyed VMware’s the most, but the next step up is costly.

Being an IT professional, I don’t have five days to set aside my regular duties and engage in a classroom style course, and being a small business owner in a slow economy, I don’t have the massive amounts of cash required to actually sit the courses anyway.

Even if the funding wasn’t an issue, justifying the expense is difficult, considering that it won’t be long until that course and information set has been superseded.

So, I have a few questions for the community:

• What are your experiences with vendor certification?
• Do you think the costs are justified in most cases?
• Which vendor gives the biggest bang-for-your-buck in their certification (think not only up front cost, but longevity of the product, possible returns for the business, etc)?
• What do you think of hardware certification?