In the 5 years that I've been my company's salesforce.com administrator, my fellow employees have been able to obtain industry recognized certifications from Oracle and Microsoft. At the same time as improving their skill sets, these certifications improve their opportunity for job security, career advancement and better compensation. My salesforce experience doesn't mean as much during my HR review as my friend's Microsoft certification. And I don't want to be penalized for focusing on salesforce.com instead of SQL, .NET or Oracle.

I know that you have some courses available but it's easier to get funding for courses that are part of a certification program that a stand alone course. And how about a self study option for some of the classroom courses?

Salesforce has a certification program for partner companies but how about one for the system administrators that actually make your product work for your customers?

Thanks.
Aiden