How many different types or levels of vendor certification are there?

There are quite a few. Take Microsoft, for example -- they have just a huge myriad of certifications. At the partner level, at the company level, they've got their certified program, their gold program, their small business specialist program. So there are several. And even when you look at networking vendors, if you look at HP, companies like that, [you see quite a variety of certifications]. Even Dell, which just announced their newly revamped partner program, [has] a registered level and a certified level, and within that certified level they're going to offer many different tracks -- the first one is the managed services track.

[Certification] is very dependent on the vendor's strategy. It may make sense just to have a single certification. It may make sense to have multiple certifications. That's really [dependent upon] what the vendor's goals are. But I think across the board you've got quite a tiering of certifications. It's not like you could look to any one vendor and have an equivalent level of certification across all [vendors]. You have to look within the given vendor's program and understand how they're segmenting their certification.

Listen to the vendor certification podcast here.

Go back to the beginning of the Vendor Certification FAQ Guide.