[kokey]

It would be nice for some kind of professional body or 10 to come into existence, so you can become say a Chartered IT <something> after either a relevant degree, few years experience and a bar exam, or a more years experience and the same exam. It's so hard for many companies to tell the difference between a guy that simply knows computers or someone who can make the right technology decisions.

[ghshephard]

In security, this is becoming more and more the case. A lot of the CISOs (equivalent to CIO / Sr. Director of IT, but for Security) have CISSPs these days.

I also haven't run into a Director of Network Engineering that wasn't a CCNP or higher for about 5+ years now (this wasn't always the case)

I think the major challenge for "Director of IT" is that it can comprise a heckuva lot of disciplines. Even for a small company - you are looking a BizApps, Back Office Servers (Exchange, AD), Oracle DBAs, Network Engineering, Telecom, Desktop Support, ServerRoom Operations - and all the political pain associated with managing all the various interests that want things their way...

[kokey]

Security certainly has it nailed, since the CISSP works like I described, and isn't vendor specific.

I believe a senior IT 'management' type qualification needs to cover, amongst a wide variety of things, things like development management (e.g. mythical man month) cost management (e.g. COCOMO) and general business sense (e.g. not getting locked in by a vendor).