If you have not already heard VMware has made some changes to the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification effective March 10, 2014 (but already showing up in MyLearn). The new policy states that VCP certifications will now expire after 2 years unless you either re-certify or certify on a newer version.
If you check your MyLearn account you should notice that your VCP certification(s) now have an expiration date.
VCP certification obtained before March 10, 2013 have been set to expire on March 10, 2015.
There is some uncertainty about what happens to your older VCP certification but the way I read it is if you are a VCP4 and you certify for VCP5 before your VCP4 expires not only do you obtain you VCP5 but your VCP4 is expiration is extended. You can also extend the expiration by obtaining a VCP on the same version but in a different track (Cloud/Desktop/Datacenter). If you obtain any of the advance certifications (VCAP) then the expiration of the VCP is set to expire 2 years after the date you obtain the advance certification.
Another huge change is if you have an active VCP certification you will be able to certify on the current version without the training requirement.
So…. What happens to advanced certifications? Will we need to recertify those? I am guessing we will hear something soon, but if you let your VCP expire I would assume your advanced certification will also be revoked – since all of the advance certifications have a dependency on the VCP (this my thought on how this will work – nothing official has been released).
I like the recertification requirement. I think it is important to stay current and the new policy helps ensure that you do. This is a fairly standard practice throughout the industry. My Citrix and EMC certifications have to be updated from time to time or they become inactive.
I still have a lot of questions and concerns about the advanced certifications and how those will be handled.
There was a lot of chatter on Twitter yesterday about the new policy: some like it, some not so much. What do you think of the new policy?
