Say hello to my newest certification, Microsoft Certfied IT Professional - Enterprise Administrator!
While as a computer engineer, Vendor certifications, mean little to me, the job market in the middle-east (at least) demands for these. Its ironic that, most job interviews revolve around certifications and specific technology implementations rather than the core concepts and the underlying principles involved. I'd much rather code in C, C++ with data structures and algorithms for a job interview than say, talk about master pages in ASP.NET and similarly would it'd be much nicer to talk about IPv4, IPv6, DNS and all as oposed to Active Directory.
So I suppose at the end of the day, Vendor Certifications do matter in the Middle East. [Oh and I'm also CCNA].