9/17/2008 -- There's a strange synergy that exists between those who create certifications and those who write about them.

Several years back, I worked for a technical publishing company that put out training guides -- voluminous tomes written in an A-Z style to help you broaden your knowledge base and pass certification exams from various vendors. They were written to cover/replace what a candidate would learn if they sat in a classroom; we took care to make sure that all training/exam objectives were covered.

One day, high-level representatives from a hardware/software vendor that I won't name came calling. They said they were impressed by the books that we were putting out -- particularly the training guides that focused on Microsoft and Novell tests. They contended that their certifications were just as good -- if not better -- and were offended by the fact that we didn't have a line of books about their offerings. They also felt that one of the main reasons Microsoft and Novell exams were popular at the time was because of third-party material. "Why don't you do the same for us as you do for them?" they asked.

As representatives of the publishing company, we told them that the opportunity cost of creating material for Microsoft and Novell exams was small, while the cost of creating material for their exams was immense. To begin with, the exams we were writing about were popular and had a measurable audience, while we had no way of knowing that anyone would ever buy books about their tests. Second, because the Microsoft/Novell exams were popular, it was easy to find qualified authors -- those who had taken the exams, taught courses about the topics, etc. The same couldn't be said for this vendor. The meeting ended.

Not much later, the vendor called again. This time, they said they would do what it took to make sure we wrote and marketed books about them. They offered to pay the majority of the cost of creating the books, assign qualified authors from their own connections and buy back a sizable quantity of the finished product. They were so adamant about the theory that demand for certifications was derived from the presence of study material, that they made the deal one we couldn't walk away from.

What I didn't foresee at the time of the agreement, however, was that they also made it a deal in which they held the upper hand. With other books, we were free to say things like, "This is a way of performing the task that you would never do in the real world but need to know in order to pass the exam." With these books, they nixed those lines, always threatening to back out of the deal if we didn't agree. Given that we were so dependent upon their buying a large quantity of the books, we had to deliver exactly what they wanted.

This story came back to me as I continue to ponder the injunction on behalf of Microsoft ordering Pass4Sure to stop distributing Microsoft exam-related material. Microsoft isn't upset that material exists on its products -- if it were, there wouldn't be a Microsoft Press pushing out self-paced "Training Kits." Microsoft wants IT professionals to take its exams, and it knows that study material helps make this possible.

Microsoft isn't upset that you can learn what you need to pass the exams on your own. It just wants the failure rate to be high enough that it feels good about the quality of its offering -- and now it's upset because the exams are easy enough to pass just by memorizing answers. Does the fault for that really lie with Pass4Sure, or does it lie with Microsoft?