[ZephyrP]

I think Cisco certifications, even the CCNA, are suspended from scrutiny by many, even in disciplines famous for their cert-skepticism like infosec.

There exist other prestigious certifications, but they generally lack the reputation for seriousness that Cisco is credited with, even crystallizing into a semi-mythological reputation for playing unfair on behalf of recipients with refusals to license IOS ELX and even lucrative hardware sales to organizations which don't have CCIE on staff.

[ocdtrekkie]

From my understanding, Microsoft certs can be similarly challenging. And from an IT industry standpoint, there's similar value in terms of partnership: Microsoft partner levels depend on having Microsoft-certified professionals.

It will be interesting to see what they do here, for instance, the Datacenter competency for Microsoft Gold partners requires MCSA: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/datacenter-co...

Right now, the document just says "we're working on something to replace these".