Which vendors offer benefits for employing certified individuals?

Zentraedi

From what I hear, both Cisco and Microsoft give various discounts in the form of hardware , software licenses, and free service calls based on the whether that company has vendor-certified employees.

So, what other vendors do that and what types of benefits do they provide?
Do VMware, EMC, Juniper, Checkpoint, Avaya have these sorts of programs?

Also, do most of these benefits only really apply to re-seller-partners, or could IT departments for large (non-IT)enterprises benefit as well?

RomBUS

I believe Dell and HP have partner programs as well and they do also provide these benefits such as discounts, free calls and certification deals.

I believe any IT staff can benefit from being a partner IMO

RobertKaucher

Zentraedi wrote: »

From what I hear, both Cisco and Microsoft give various discounts in the form of hardware , software licenses, and free service calls based on the whether that company has vendor-certified employees.

So, what other vendors do that and what types of benefits do they provide?
Do VMware, EMC, Juniper, Checkpoint, Avaya have these sorts of programs?

Also, do most of these benefits only really apply to re-seller-partners, or could IT departments for large (non-IT)enterprises benefit as well?

My understanding of Cisco is that these apply to purchases for internal use as well. Partners on the MS side are all VARs of some sort, I believe.

Zentraedi

RomBUS wrote: »

I believe Dell and HP have partner programs as well and they do also provide these benefits such as discounts, free calls and certification deals.

I believe any IT staff can benefit from being a partner IMO

What do you mean by "any IT staff can benefit from being a partner IMO"?

By "partner", I meant an officially recognized business partner such as those companies which have Cisco/Microsoft Gold and Silver partner certification. AFAIK, those are only for VARs.

How do IT staff at a non-VAR company become a "partner"?

RobertKaucher wrote: »

My understanding of Cisco is that these apply to purchases for internal use as well. Partners on the MS side are all VARs of some sort, I believe.

So, MS provides no explicit benefit for a non-VAR companies to employ any certified staff?