Tech Certification Vendors

Hundreds of tech certification vendors develop and maintain thousands of tech certifications. It’s overwhelming. I’ll try to simplify things here.

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What Exactly is a Certification Vendor?

A certification vendor is simply any certifying body that issues certifications for a specific knowledge domain. This does not include training partners. This includes only the company or organization that has their name attached to the certification. Since this site only focuses on tech and some tech-adjacent certifications, assume I am referring to tech certifications if I don’t explicitly state it.

Why Are There So Many Different Ones?

Good question. Let me first bring up historical and market relevance. IT is a relatively new industry. Unlike accounting, human resources, marketing, banking, insurance and so on, IT is not as established and is constantly changing faster than these other industries. It’s tough hiring for thousands of positions when only hundreds are actually qualified. Many people in tech today did not intend on getting into tech. I’ve worked with lawyers and biologists who ended up in tech simply because that was what the market demanded.

When so many people are suddenly finding their way in this industry, we can assume that not all of them will have the fundamentals down. This is why a bachelor’s degree with a major in computer science or information systems is so helpful to have. It doesn’t guarantee that someone will do a better job than someone without one, but it does mean that they likely know the basics that are required to excel in the industry. For everyone not wanting to go back to school and pick up a second bachelor’s degree, tech certifications can help fill that gap.

This isn’t the only reason tech certifications are abundant. A college degree will only do so much. How can we know that a network engineer actually knows how to do network engineering? There’s no specific degree for a proprietary operating system. That’s where tech certifications come in. Cisco was one of the first tech companies to develop a technical certification that demonstrates a mastery of the Cisco operating system and computer networking. Since then, many tech companies have developed their own certification programs for their own products.

Two Distinct Types

There’s not just an abundance of tech certifications because of the abundance of thriving companies in the industry. There’s a myriad of organizations that also offer certification without offering an accompanying commercial product.

The term “vendor-neutral” means that a certification vendor offers certification for a specific knowledge domain without making it specific to a particular company. In this case, the “vendor” means a company that offers a commercial product. This is of course the default use of the word vendor, but that’s not the case on this site. Red Hat offers certification for their proprietary Linux operating system, while other vendor-neutral certification vendors will offer certifications for a generic Linux operating system. They may mention Red Hat, but it will not be focused on Red Hat. These are especially common in the realm of cybersecurity.

Producing and administering tech certifications can be lucrative. This is another reason why there are so many certification vendors. Some exist to help close a skills gap and award professionals for gaining a new proficiency. Others exist to do just that, but also to make money along the way.

Should There Be This Many?

I’m going to go with no. Another reason there’s an abundance is because it’s affordable to maintain. It can be very expensive to produce a new certification, but much cheaper to routinely update as technology changes. This may not be the case with some of the more established vendors, but I would wager that it is with the majority of them.

So we have a lot of individual tech companies developing certifications for their own products and we have a lot of organizations developing certifications to help teach in-demand tech skills. It’s a lot!

That is the point of this site: highlighting the tech certification vendors that I believe offer the best value while also documenting the rest in case some of us are interested in them as well.

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