I must admit I have some bias starting my career at Accenture. At that time, we developed our own training programs that were as good or better than what vendors provided so certification did not seem as relevant. However, as the ecosystems for vendors has grown, I can see where customers want something that they can hang their hat on to know that a consultant has at least a certain baseline set of skills. I also know that consultants do not like that as much. At the end of the day, customers need to do as much due diligence on the consultants they use as they do the software they want to implement. Most do not today. That has to change.

I think it depends on what role you want to have on a project. You would need different certifications if you want to manage a SAP project vs. being an ABAP developer.

I’ve done a follow up video which explains my baseline rationale- runs 7 mins:

http://blip.tv/file/1705651

and Ed Herrmann and the boys do an excellent dissection of the topic in a 46 min podcast (about 30 mins in and on):

http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/2009/01/25/egeeks-podcast-episode-3/